This week we read the article called Venus of Willendorf by Christopher Witcombe. After reading this article I learned a great deal about something I had never heard of, it was interesting and kept my attention throughout the article. This article was mainly about the 11.1 centimeter statue named Venus that was found in Austria in the year of 1908. The carved statue is thought to date back somewhere to the years 15,000 BC to 10,000 BC.
The Venus statue was originally named the pear because of the statues round shape at the center and skinny shape at the top. The statue has extra-large features including thighs that overlap, a stomach that extends out a great deal, a wide butt, and enormous breasts. The statue also stresses the vaginal area by having a great amount of effort and focus put into the detail of the woman’s private area. The emphasis of this area has led to the name being changed to Venus rather than the nickname of pear. I found it interesting that the sculptor focused so much on the figures curvy features and vaginal area rather than adding a face. I think the face would be something to spend the most time on by making a distinct image of the person the statue is of.
This statue makes me think of issues relating to contemporary things because the statue relates to the idea of religion and its role in art. Throughout the art I have studied I have always found that religion has a relation in some aspect. And the article talks about how this figure could have been a woman of high standing in the group, someone they idealized, and someone that led them in a significant way. This is especially true in the way the article also points out that with her size and shape it is not typical of a woman of that time period considering they would have been thinner due to the lifestyle of hunting and gathering. But since the Venus statue is so large it shows she was not participating in these activities in order to get to the size the figure depicts her as. Another contemporary issue that this article makes me think about is the fact that the idea of her being a ‘goddess’ or ‘idol’ of that time is completely different from what we currently view as the ideal woman figure. Now a days woman who have flat stomachs, thin waists, slender legs, and boobs somewhat large in size are what are socially acceptable, compared to a woman who resembles the statue would not fit into our current social perception and view of an ideal woman. I think it is interesting that it seems more recent that a woman that is thinner is socially preferred, because even paintings and art of the renaissance period emphasized women being thicker and have more meat on them and that was portrayed as beautiful, which this is a lot closer to now than when the statue was created so it was not long ago that the perception of what is beautiful and what is not changed sometime recently.
