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May 10, 2005
The Venus of Willendorf
Damn that husband of mine who had a chance to sit down and watch How Art Made the World (yesterday BBC2 9pm) while I was trying to research my next essay. I ended up finding the programme informative and interesting (indicated by the fact that I got two whole pages read throughout the course of the hour) There was one thing that really niggled me though (ah here she goes) and that involved the discussion over why certain body parts of The Venus of Willendorf are exaggerated and others almost ignored. Both the presenter and the Doctor doing the research referred to her features as ‘grotesque,’* not ‘commonly regarded in modern times as grotesque’ but just ‘grotesque’ as if such personal opinion could be stated fact.
Shouldn’t it be vitally apparent to so called experts that it would be so much easier for them to enter the minds of our prehistoric ancestors, if they left their preconceptions about the female body in the 21st century, right where they belong?
Lo and behold they came to the conclusion that they who created the Venus were Nomadic and often didn’t get enough food, so she acted as some sort of desirable form (as well as a fertility symbol.)
It a shame that the two men involved in the programme had nothing to learn from the ancestors they are so desperate to study. It seems like many of our contemporaries (male and female) the sight of a woman with naturally ample breasts that haven’t been firmed by £3,500 worth of surgery, and a stomach not starved to ironing-board-flatness but stretched by numerous pregnancies is not something to be celebrated and worshiped but something repulsive and ridiculous.
*My copy of the Oxford dictionary defines grotesque as,
‘comically or repulsively distorted’
Posted by purple elephant at May 10, 2005 01:17 PM