Johnny Depp
Hailed as the
'Queen of Heaven'
by the people of ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), and often conflated with the Sumerian goddess Innana, Ishtar's mythology, idols and artistic depictions illuminated her distinct celestial qualities. While she was the goddess of love, sex and fertility, Ishtar was not depicted as a Mother goddess holding a babe. But with wings and primed for battle as the goddess of war. Contemporary interpretations of the ancient being veer into fantasy, hedonistic scenes of love and warring dualities.
Ana Karkar. Great Harrow, 2024
Almine Rech's recent Whole Cookie exhibition in London unveiled a new series of Ishtar-inspired paintings by the French-American artist Ana Karkar. Composed as a temple to eroticism, it explored how Ishtar’s polarities and contradictions feed the creative spirit, while simultaneously provoking insecurity and disruption. Karkar’s gestural work features colourful bodies twisted and blended in a dance macabre. Her hypnotic pieces outline the body with figurative brushstrokes evoking the work of Egon Schiele (1890-1918).
Across the channel, the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris is inviting visitors to rediscover the diversity of 20th-century Arab modernism. Running until August 25th, its exhibition attempts to decolonise Arab artists from the Parisian avant-garde movements of the time. Among its selection of over 200 works, is the ethereal La Danse d'Ishtar (1994) by Juliana Seraphim (1934-2005); donated to the exhibition by Richard Saltoun Gallery. A Palestinian-born Surrealist artist, Seraphim was a pioneer of the Middle Eastern art scene of the 1960s-1990s. As seen in her depiction of Ishtar, the artist's dreamlike iconography coalesced with the liberation of female sexuality, agency and spirituality.
Juliana Seraphim, La Danse d'Ishtar, 1994. Courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery
Other portrayals of Ishtar have cropped up across art history. There was the mythology-inspired triptych (1983) by Neo-Expressionist Jean-Michel Basquiat. An Ishtar-inspired porcelain plate featured in The Dinner Party installation (1974–79) by feminist artist Judy Chicago (b. 1939). As well as the illustration of Ishtar's Midnight Courtship, found in Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton's (1850-1906) 1884 book-length poem Ishtar and Izdubar.
Illustration of Ishtar's Midnight Courtship from Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton's 1884 book-length
poem Ishtar and Izdubar, loosely based on George Smith's recent translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh
Ishtar, 1983 by Jean-Michel Basquiat
(CHRIS J RATCLIFFE/AFP via Getty Images)
