RSS Feed
TwitterInspired 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!
 |
| 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?
References & Resources
Gardner’s Art Through the Ages
Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe’s Venus of Willendorf page
at 7:34 pm
[...] Follow this link: The Art History Blog » Blog Archive » The Venus of Willendorf [...]
at 9:41 am
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.
at 2:57 pm
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.
at 5:57 pm
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!)
at 11:00 pm
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.
at 8:48 pm
Thanks for the mention! Looks like a good series here – I’m subscribing! :)
at 12:54 pm
She even has her own FaceBook page, http://www.facebook.com/pages/Venus-of-Willendorf/32500928571?_fb_noscript=1
at 6:43 pm
[...] http://deepthoughtsbyhealey.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/venus-of-willendorf/ http://arthistory.we-wish.net/2009/07/29/the-venus-of-willendorf/ [...]
at 5:54 pm
We are fascinated by the thought that such a sophisticated, little sculpture could have been made thousands of years ago. Art historians point to the Venus of Willendorf as evidence that the culture that created her was not just concerned with foraging for food, but had other concerns such as fertility. In that case, the statue is very practical, but on the other hand it shows that thousands of years ago, our ancestors were “sophisticated” enough to establish fertility cults and to communicate their needs beyond food and shelter.
at 2:22 pm
As I read descriptions of this beautiful Venus on the web, it is striking to me how male writers describe her as “obese”, “grossly exaggerated”, etc. I think she is as beautiful in her way as any idealized Venus of Greek times, e.g, and she so clearly is meant as a symbol of feminine power, abundance, fertility.
at 8:51 am
Venus of Willendorf is the like the “she” in a Bob Dylan song…they are singing about whole female gender or maybe femdom.
at 2:53 pm
The Met as an almost as mysterious piece from Greece (albeit only 6,000 years old, not 20,000). It is knowing so little about the figure and realising that our ancestors were not so much unlike us that makes them deeply fascinating and hugely significant to art history.
Context is so important when looking at art. Here we have little or no idea of the exact context. All we know is that early humans were drawn to create just as we are.
Figure at The Met: http://realitybitesartblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/bite-49-unknown-female-figure-greece.html
at 12:07 am
I think the reason why so many people are fascinated and intrigued by the Women from Willendorf is her shape and form and the curiosity of why the sculptor exaggerated her body so much. We don’t know if women in the Paleolithic period looked like that or were the figurines strictly meant to represent health and fertility. What fascinated me about this tiny statue was her face and arms. I don’t know if she has a headdress on, or her hair is meant to be braided, or maybe even the sculptor thought her face wasn’t the main focus. When I first studied the statue, I did not notice her arms at all and didn’t know that they were resting on her breasts. I also initially thought that she was much larger than her true size, which is less than 5 inches! It’s such an interesting sculpture.