|
Women in Prehistory
The Venus of Willendorf Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe |
||
|---|---|---|
|
2. WHAT'S IN A NAME?
When first discovered, the statuette was identified as "Venus." Szombathy refers to her as the "Venus of Willendorf" in an article published in 1909 [see BIBLIOGRAPHY]. A year or so later, MacCurdy refers to her as the "so-called Venus of Willendorf" in Smithsonian
Report for 1909 (published in 1911) [see BIBLIOGRAPHY].
The name "Venus" had first been used, in a tone of mocking irony, in 1864 by the Marquis Paul de Vibraye who described a headless, armless, footless ivory statuette he discovered at Laugerie-Basse in the Vèzère valley in the Dordogne as a "Vénus impudique" or "immodest Venus" (now in the Musée de l'Homme, Paris).
The Marquis, of course, was playfully reversing the appellation of "Venus pudica" ("modest Venus") that is used to describe a statue type of the Classical Venus which shows, in the Capitoline Venus for example, the goddess attempting to conceal her breasts and pubic area from view. The inference the Marquis makes is that this prehistoric Venus makes no attempt to hide her sexuality.
The name "Venus" was subsequently adopted by Édouard Piette (1827-1906) [see BIBLIOGRAPHY], who used it to describe an ivory figurine, of which only the corpulent torso survives, found in 1892 in the "Grotte du Pape" at Brassempouy in the Department of Les Landes and now in the Musée St. Germain-en-Laye.
She was originally nicknamed la poire - "the pear" - on account of her shape. For Piette, the name "Venus" may have come to mind in this particular instance because of the emphatic treatment of the vulva's labia and the prominent, slightly protruding pubic area, which he tastefully refers to as "le mont de Vénus" - the mound of Venus (or mons pubis). "Venus" has since become the collective term used to identify all obese Palaeolithic statuettes of women.
The ironic identification of these figurines as "Venus" pleasantly satisfied certain assumptions at the time about the primitive, about women, and about taste. Venus, of course, was the Classical goddess of sexual love and beauty.
Known to the Greeks as Aphrodite, statues of her nude proliferated in the Mediterranean world from the 4th century BCE on, beginning with that carved by Praxiteles for the sanctuary on the Island of Knidos.
From the Praxiteles model there developed a type of freestanding female nude that came to be known as the "Venus pudica" or "modest Venus," mentioned above, whose pose shows the goddess attempting to conceal her breasts and pubic area from view.
Two well-known examples of this type are the Capitoline Venus (in the Museo Capitolino in Rome), and the Medici Venus (in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence)
In the 15th century, the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli revived this same pose in his painting The Birth of Venus and initiated a renewed interest in the Classical Venus.
Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, c. 1484-86 (Uffizi Gallery, Florence) So familiar is she in the west, that the name Venus instantly conjures in the mind an image of a tall, erotically curvaceous, nude young woman whose primary identity, as every heterosexual male recognizes, resides in her physical and sexual body. The Classical and Renaissance Venus's physicality and sexuality, though, are treated with a high degree of civilized restraint. In comparison with the "Venus" of Willendorf, the breasts of the Classical Venus are small, her pubic area is undefined (no indication of the vulva, no definition of the labia), and her stomach, hips, and buttocks are given no particular emphasis. In other words, she exhibits a tasteful, civilized response to female sexuality that involves both the display but also the suppression of its more physical aspects. The beginning of "history" - the shift from the prehistoric to the historic, a step marked by the advent of writing - also marks for some the move from the primitive to the civilized. The Willendorf figurine nicely illustrates the contrast. Her bulging, bulbous body, large breasts, ample abdomen, and vulva slit manifest unrefined, uncivilized, "primitive" taste. She also exhibits, in ways that are at once appealing (to most women, perhaps) and threatening (to most men, perhaps), a physical and sexual self that seems unrestrained, unfettered by cultural taboos and social conventions. She is an image of "natural" femaleness, of uninhibited female power, which "civilization," in the figure of the Classical Venus, later sought to curtail and bring under control. To identify the Willendorf figurine as "Venus," then, was a rich, male joke that neatly linked the primitive and the female with the uncivilized and at the same time, through implicit contrast with the Classical Venus, served as a reassuring example to the patriarchal culture of the extent to which the female and female sexuality had been overcome and women effectively subjugated by the male-dominated civilizing process. By naming her "Venus," a set of associations is brought to the image that influences our response to what we see. In one respect, she becomes a negative image, a "failed Venus" who, by the standards of the Classical Venus, is not beautiful and is not sexually attractive. The name "Venus" also encourages us to judge her as a piece of sculpture against the standards of idealized Greek, Roman, and Renaissance art, where she again fails miserably. There is also a sex/gender conflict; between female and feminine. From a patriarchal western culture point of view, the Classical Venus is both sexually female and also feminine in terms of gender. According to current theory, while sex is biological, the product of nature, gender is to be understood as social, the product of nurture or culture. The nurture and culture paradigm that has been defining the feminine in the west since the Greeks is a patriarchal one. The feminine, in terms of gender identification, as it has come to be identified in western culture, is arguably partially, or even wholly, a male construction. The "Venus" of Willendorf is visibly biologically female, but she is not feminine; the name "Venus" imposes upon her a gendered femininity that she does not have, so again she fails.
Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe |
Venus of Willendorf c. 24,000-22,000 BCE Oolitic limestone 43/8 inches (11.1 cm) high (Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna)
Copyright © (text only) 2000 This essay appeared originally in IMAGES OF WOMEN IN ANCIENT ART 
Praxiteles 
Capitoline Venus
|
|
