Woman or Venus of Willendorf

When thinking of a statue showing a woman I think of the kind with no arms, trying to be modest that can have fountains attached. When I first looked at the Venus or Woman of Willendorf statue I instantly thought of the tribal shops were you can go in and buy figurines of different things, which was extremely different then what I imagined of a statue. As I read through the articles I came across many different subjects of one little 11 centimeter statue. For example, I saw a full discription of the statue in material terms, and then i read about her name and the different accepts of that name.
Venus or Woman of Willendorf as it is called was found in Australia in 1908 by archaeologist Josef Szombathy. This figurine is known as the most famous woman statue and also the first woman. The article said it was carved out of limestone, which is not found in the area of where the statue was. They also say it was carved using flint tools. while in the many decades after the findings they kept changing the time era of which the statue was from, they finally came to a conclusion in 1990 after a study was made that Venus of Willendorf was from 24,000-22,000 BCE (Witcombe 1).
The name Venuswas used throughout time by people with different definitions in mind. The name was adopted by many men startingin 1864 to describe Palaeolithic statues of women. "The ironic identification of these figurines a "Venus" pleasantly satisfied certian assumptions at the time about the primitive, about women, and about taste" (Witecomb 2). Through this article there are many types of Venus including Classical Venus, Renaissances Venus, and what they called a failed Venus. From the classical Venus look naming the statue Venus of Willendorf Venus it makes her to be a negative image. The negative image outlook is from the standards of the classical Venus because Woman of Willendorf is not beautiful of sexually attractive. Also "The name "Venus" encourages us to judge her as a piece of sculpture against the standards of isealized Greek, Roman, and Renaissance art, where she again fails miserably" (Witcombe 2). I feel the name Venus was wrongly disposed upon her because of the definition given to it and the way people think they see the name.
I feel that the Woman of Willendorf statue was somebody, while it probably isn't someone strong or a leader, it was still someone. In the article they describe her physically because that is all we really all we know of her. We can assume things about her by items around her time, but we don't know for sure why she was carved or her purpose. Although this article does mainly talk about the statue it also has underlining issues from todays world like self image and how the ideal beauty is in the world. It proves that even way back in the day there was always a line for who was beautiful and who wasn't. Venus of Willendorf was given the wrong name because of the names label. maybe in her time she was the face or the body of beauty and that was what every girl wanted to be.

Intro about me

Hi! I am Jennifer. I am a technical theatre major, though I do love every part of technical theater lighting is what I want to do. I have always been interested in art like photography, graphic design, but I do have to say that I probably would not be taking this art class if it wasn't a requirement for my major. I do like the history of the anceint and medieval eras, so i am hoping to really like this class.