Inspired by a college classmate’s ventures into daily blogging and a thought-provoking blog entry on Smarthistory.org, I’m going to give this daily blogging thing a try with “The Daily Label”. I’ll be writing a (hopefully) daily, spunky label-style post on one artwork, and at the end I’ll pose one of the questions I might ask you if I were giving you a docent tour in front of the piece I just wrote about. Respond away (to both the question and the daily label idea) in the comments!
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| Venus of Willendorf, at the Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. Image by Wikipedia User MatthiasKabel via Wikipedia. |
The so-called Venus of Willendorf is one of the oldest and most famous ladies in all of art history, and she’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Her small size gives us an important clue to the people who made her: she’s portable, hinting that her makers moved around a lot (hunter-gatherers, in other words). Her 4-inch high frame isn’t the most “realistic” of figures: her female attributes are quite exaggerated. On top of that, creating figurines of women was much more popular than creating ones of men. No one knows quite why this is–but most guess that it has something to do with the culture’s great reverence for women’s ability to bear children.
And where does her name come from? Like almost every single older work of art, this isn’t the name the artist gave her, but rather the name that stuck after her discovery. Willendorf is the place in Austria where she was found (she now resides in the Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna). As for Venus, the ancient Roman goddess of love, she predates classical mythology by over 20,000 years–prehistoric female figures found in the 1920s, like this one, were often bestowed with the name ‘Venus’.
Answer me this What do you think it is is it about this diminuitive statue that has stood the test of time and fascinated people for so long? Does it draw you in the same way?
Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe’s Venus of Willendorf page
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I teach an Art History survey and, due to her featureless face, I like to refer to her as Every Woman, ala Chaka Khan. It always hits home with the audience.
What draws me in is the extreme age of the artifact. To put her in perspective she has been dated to the last ice age, if not earlier. She is a mystery like others of the same era. I can’t help wondering about the creator’s life at such an early time. I imagine the creator, early human, working away to make the Venus in a fire lit Austrian cave. Its probably very cold outside. These thoughts make this special for me.
Grit, too funny — and it’s exactly right: she is anonymous, and totally meant to be “every woman”!
Art Twomacs, what an excellent point. The fact that she’s dated to over 20,000 years ago is so astounding and that mystery of her creation is a great imagination-sparker. (Makes me think it would be a great beginning to a brainstorming/free writing activities for students!)
I like her shape – she’s nicely rounded, not pointy and sharp, wider in the middle. And the bow of her head is sort of reverential. She is like an Everywoman, Mother Nature and – I mean this is the nicest possible way – Walmart Woman.
Thanks for the mention! Looks like a good series here – I’m subscribing! :)
She even has her own FaceBook page, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Venus-of-Willendorf/32500928571?_fb_noscript=1