PART 1
COMPARE & CONTRAST – Mother Earth, Fertility, Love and More?
Describe the functional purpose of the Venus of Willendorf and the Venus De Milo. How is their imagery similar? How is it different? Find a third Venus example to compare and contrast these two and describe why you selected it.
Summary: I first looked up each form and tried to relate to the pieces both individually and against the other. I wish I could have seen them in real life, but a close second was finding panoramic videos so I could closer and more fully inspect them.
Reason: I believe you ask this question to make me as a student better understand the ideals of womanhood in disparate eras of history in art.
Purpose: The question to me is more about the desire in art for the female form, in every level... mother/maidenhood, and even into the wonder years of a crone.
Purpose: The question to me is more about the desire in art for the female form, in every level... mother/maidenhood, and even into the wonder years of a crone.
Direction: I feel unchanged at the end of this essay because I already knew quite a bit about the idealization of the female form... However, now I have a bit more to back it up with.
Impressions: I was really excited to notice the old woman's face in the Venus With the Mirror. When I got up close and personal to it and saw that, it kind of brought everything together for me in the spectrum of the Trinity, through all three pieces of art.
PART 2
The Venus of Willendorf and the Venus de Milo are both depictions of a woman. Even though the Venus of Willendorf was created thousands of years before the Venus de Milo, the female form is similar, though not quite the same. Each sculpture is a beautiful representation of the female form, with a strong aesthetic and presence to them.
The Venus of Willendorf has slightly elongated breasts, and a large protruding belly. "The sculptor exaggerated the figure's female attributes by giving it pendulous breasts, a big belly [...], wide hips, dimpled knees and buttocks, and solid thighs." (text, 5) Unlike in today's society, where women want hourglass figures, the full figure of this statuette's body is an old world ideal of female beauty. This generally signified their fertility--skinner women would most likely be malnourished which is closely tied to being infertile.
She is one of several Venus or goddess figures we see from the Upper Paleolithic period. The Venus of Willendorf comes from about 20,000-25,000 B.C.E., which was long before the goddess of Venus was ever even thought of. The form of the Venus of Willendorf does, however, come from a time period where “the mother goddess” was worshiped. (http://tomreeder.wordpress.com/tag/venus-of-willendorf/) All of these figures have elongated breasts and wide hips. It signifies to me a woman after childbirth. In particular, I feel like the fullness of the breasts and stomach in the Venus of Willendorf makes me thinks she may be currently carrying a child, or perhaps has had many children. Our text states, "By carving a woman with well-nourished body, the artist may be expressing health and fertility, which could ensure the ability to produce strong children, thus guaranteeing the survival of the clan." (text, 5)
The Venus de Milo, in contrast, is slender and has perky breasts. She is curvaceous and seductive, but has the shape of a woman who has not yet bore children. "The sculpture was intended by its maker to recall the Aphrodite of Praxilteles, and indeed the head with it's dreamy gaze is very like Praxilteles' work. The figure has the heavier proportions of high classical sculpture, but the twisting stance and the strong projection of the knee are typical of Hellenistic art." (text, 165) She is in the S-curve pose, which fully exposes everything she has to offer, giving welcome to viewers. In a way, it's an ideal for the voyeur in us. "The drapery around the lower part of the body also has the rich, three-dimensional quality associated with the Hellenistic sculpture of Rhodes Pergamon. The juxtaposition of flesh and drapery, which seem about to slip off the figure entirely, adds a note of erotic tension." (text, 165)
Even though the depictions of the female forms are different between the Venus of Willendorf and the Venus De Milo, it is clear that they are both representative of the same thing. Both are interpretations on the idealistic female forms of the periods they originate in. These women aren’t in the same place in their lives. They are in different parts of the trinity-- one is a mother, and the other is the maid, or otherwise, virgin. Despite the relation in concept, the sculptures of both Venus's are not relative in shape. Willendorf is short and stout, whereas De Milo is elegant, svelte, and long-limbed.
The third in the trinity is the figure of the crone, or old woman. I picked Venus with a Mirror for a few reasons. Her full body form is similar to the Venus of Willendorf, but she has a serene look on her young face, like the Venus de Milo. An interesting thing with this painting, though, is that if you look closely into the mirror, you will notice that the reflection in it is not her young, beautiful face, but rather that of an old woman. This image of an older woman is reminiscent to me of The Venus of Willendorf, which is a more mature figure and seems at a later point in her life. This piece is a wonderful melding of these two sculptures in painted form.
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Venus of Willendorf Artist Unkown 24000 BCE Limestone |
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| Image Source Aphrodite of Melos (Venus De Milo) Artist Unknown 150-100 BCE Marble |
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| Image Source Venus Chouuu (DeviantArt) 3-D Render 0ct 2009 |
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Venus with the Mirror
by Titian
c. 1555
Oil on Canvas
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Where's the rest of it?
ReplyDeleteDevon - It was a good revisit. One complaint - please don't center the text - flush left - (AKA left justify). Considering your circumstances you were able to communicate your thoughts, opinions and back it up with research. Still some minor format issues. On a scale of 1 to 4, this was a 3.4 for the outcome and not the attempt and it certainly could have been higher if there were no issues.
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