Prehistoric
Nude Woman (Venus of Willendorf) Nude Woman (Venus of Willendorf), c. 28,000-25,000 B.C.E., Limestone, 4 1/4" high (Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna)
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- (music playing)
- People love definitive answers.
- We really want to have a clear understanding of everything we see.
- Art historians especially so.
- But people also love to make things.
- We love to make art.
- And one of the oldest works of art in the world yet found
- is a small female figurine
- that sometimes simply called female nude,
- but is still universally known as the Venus of Willendorf--
- a name that makes no sense whatsoever,
- but really speaks to the lens that our culture looks through.
- She acquired the name Venus when she was found in 1908
- in a village in Austria called Willendorf.
- She's only about 11 centimeters high
- and she dates from about 25,000 years ago.
- So she's really old.
- And in the museum in Vienna
- where we're looking at her in the Natural History Museum,
- they've shrouded her in darkness, in a glass case,
- illuminated from above.
- The outside looks like a Greek temple
- and on it it says 'Venus of Willendorf'.
- And in fact, in the temple, there's a little button,
- because remember this is a science museum,
- lots of kids, and kids love to push buttons.
- And when they do, the white light on the figurine turns red
- and a little flute music starts.
- Now of course we have no idea if these people listen to music,
- what that music would have been.
- It's really an attempt to fill in all the gaps.
- We know almost nothing about her.
- We don't know why she was made, who made her.
- What we have is the figure and virtually no context.
- It is in some ways an anthropological object rather than an art object.
- By giving her the name of an ancient Greek goddess,
- the goddess of Love, Venus,
- we were assigning meaning to her--
- a meaning of her being a goddess figure
- and somehow associated with fertility.
- Now we have no reason to believe any of that is true.
- I suppose we do have a little bit more context and that is
- this is only one of quite a number of female figures that have been found from this era.
- This is during the last Ice Age.
- And it's some of the first figural sculpture that we've seen.
- What's interesting is that almost all the sculptures that have been found have been female figures.
- We should say all of the figures that have been found so far
- are female figures and they're nude.
- But they're of different shapes.
- Some exaggerate the breasts and buttocks but others are thin.
- But maybe in ten years or a hundred years
- art historians and archaeologists will find male figures.
- So all of this is guesswork,
- all we've got to look at is the figure itself.
- Let's take a close look.
- She has no feet and very thin arms,
- which she rests high up on her breasts.
- And she has no facial features.
- That's consistent with almost all of the figures from this period that have been found.
- There is a careful rendering of the hair,
- or perhaps a woven hat that's on her head.
- Some archaeologists have suggested that this might be a reed hat that she wears.
- Oh, there's the music and the red light.
- That's right. A small girl has just pushed the button.
- The hands are articulated ever so slightly, defining the fingers.
- And archaeologists who have looked at this carefully have suggested that
- perhaps the exaggeration of the stomach and of the breasts and of the head
- those are bulbous shapes throughout,
- are partially a result of the natural shape of the stone.
- This is a limestone object.
- She's symmetrical.
- And it's clearly not something that was meant to stand up,
- as you mention there were no feet.
- But this is a figure that would've easily filled a hand.
- And you have the sense that this is something that was meant to be held,
- carried in a pocket perhaps, something like that.
- She does fit comfortably in a hand.
- We know that she was originally painted with ochre paint, a kind of red paint.
- Beyond that it's really hard to say much more.
- So we'll continue to be fascinated by it.
- Art historians will continue to try to find answers.
- And in some ways, I'm sure, we'll always fall into
- the trap of reflecting our own interests and our own needs
- as we try to understand this object.
- I'm not sure that we'll ever fully understand it
- or be able to retrieve its original meanings.
- Nope.
- (music playing)
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At 5:31, how is the moon large enough to block the sun? Isn't the sun way larger?
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