“My Hideous Progeny”: Creative Monstrosity in the Works of Kiki Smith, Abigail Lane, and Cindy Sherman

Abstract

The expression “My Hideous Progeny” is widely known to be taken from Mary Shelley’s preface to the revised edition of Frankenstein (1831), in which she wrote, of the novel itself and of its creature, Frankenstein’s monster. This paper argues that, if the monster is seen not only as the product of Frankenstein’s workshop of filthy creation, but also as the child from whom Frankenstein as parent recoils in horror; the works of Kiki Smith, Abigail Lane, and Cindy Sherman, created out of body parts, may also be considered hideous progenies of female creativity. Like Mary Shelley’s gothic novel, the body, in the work of these three women artists, is not only the raw material of their art, but also the screen on which we project our bad dreams. Through the art of Smith, Lane, and Sherman, we can certainly feel the shudder of body horror that ripples through the Gothic canon from Frankenstein, whose manmade monster’s yellow skin barely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath. Departing from their artistic examples, we will be able to perceive how the monstrous feminine in contemporary art can be grounded in a very famous hallmark work of Gothic literature.