The Willendorf Venus
From the sublime (Lady Clare) to the ridiculous. Austrians are celebrating the centenary of finding this corpulent missus in the hamlet of Willendorf in 1908 by putting on a display at Vienna's Natural History Museum. The Willendorf Venus, complete with Afro hairstyle, is 4 inches high and probably 25,000 years old, although how a pre-history figurine carved out of rock can be dated is beyond me. Note that she doesn't follow the fleshy knickers tradition of Western European art. She has a vulva. Could this be Man's very first attempt at pornography?
posted by Unknown @ 8.8.08
4 comments
4 Comments:
Now you really are getting close to the really important stuff Ian.
I love the concept that Sculpture was probably the first 'Art form' and for those who find the origins of 'Art' interesting I got muddled up with this in a superficial way some months ago and found some links listed here, not exactly academic high flying sources but interesting to people like me! But what does it say of 20c sculpture; Moore and Hepworth for example? Any sort of link?
http://dorsetsculpture.blogspot.com/search?q=ram
My first thought was Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping. Then I thought she looks like the queues I see outside my local KFC. From there I went to this is modern Western woman!
Thinking about it a bit more seriously, I know that some primitive cultures in which most of the natives are underfed and skinny regard fat women as the mark of luxury. So, I reckon this is an African chief's queen...
...er...
...if you'll pardon the expression.
I think painting came first, because most primitive peoples adorn their bodies with pigments before they develop much in the way of tools. To cut this fat lady must have required tools and a lot of hard work. Much quicker to "blood" a novice hunter with the blood of a kill, as they used to do in foxhunting. I'll bet that tradition goes back to the dawn of society.
Queasy thought: the first painting might have been a mark made in blood!
Henry Moore? He wasn't capable of anything this sophisticated!
Now we get close to that problem question of 'What Is Art'. The marking of the body whether modern cosmetics or blooding does not quite fit into 'Art for Art's Sake' or 'Illustration'; but you have a good point in that it probably developed into the skill we now call painting, which the Turner Prize judges can't find any more.
Hi, Robert
The Turner Prize judges look for gimmicks, not art. However, they did select a female painter the year before last. Unbelievably, I did think she was the best of the usual bad bunch. I'm not sure how she even got nominated, but they went for her and I was gobsmacked I'd picked the winner! Can't recall much about it, except it was some sort of abstract spiral painting, pleasant enough, but not what you'd call stunning art.
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