God's Gift to Man

1987

Bessie Harvey described her art as a collaboration with nature and God. Her anthropomorphic compositions grew from found natural forms in wood foraged in Tennessee, informed by her personal study of African art. In God’s Gift to Man, detailed and individualized women are arranged on top of a visceral red gash. Harvey grapples with Biblical gender edicts demanding women be subservient to men, while evincing the painful frequency and reality of abuse and sexual assault of women by those same men.