Austria has the wonderfully curvaceous Venus of Willendorf, and Ankara's Museum of Anatolian Civilizations is home to this marvellous statuette of a goddess, possibly giving birth, while seated on a throne flanked by large cats. I seriously wonder why worshipping voluptuous females went out of style... Well, we won't get into the history of religions here, but just look at her:
Someone, one day in around 5750 BCE in the Neolithic settlement of Çatalhöyük, selected a piece of clay to sculpt this surprisingly small beauty. I had only ever seen her in photographs, and had imagined her much bigger, but she was far more impressive in person than in any photograph I've studied. Though her figure is simplified and abstracted, the level of detail in her folds of flesh is astounding. There are carefully rendered creases and dimples all around her body, and the sense of power in her posture still radiates today. There is no shortage of goddess or female figurines that have been found in Central and Eastern Anatolia, and the museum has an exquisite collection of them to fall in love with:
They are also loads of fun to draw (you will see my attempts in a future post). Many of these little ladies are from Çatalhöyük as well, which just so happens to be not too far away...
Note: Having now just visited Çatalhöyük, our very knowledgeable guide Tunç told us that archaeologists are reluctant to call these figurines goddesses, and suspect that they may have been used by women as fertility talismans. We will never know!
4 comments:
Not a photo shopped Barbie doll to be seen. And I read somewhere that most early figurines are "lumpy" partly because the artists were new to the form and could not accurately bake long,thin shapes. But I like to think the matronly figure was valued!
Hmm... that's interesting, I hadn't heard that. I have read that the general theory is that large, curvy females with exaggerated breasts, hips, buttocks, bellies, and thighs represented fertility, which was highly valued by hunter-gatherers...
There was a wall painting in the museum which depicted a group of men in a hunting scene— they were thin, and there was one female painted with them who was still depicted as large and curvy. Plus, there are plenty of animal figurines with thin shapes...
I wonder, what if little girls today were given very glamourous Venus-type dolls to play with? Can you imagine Barbie boxes packed with a "lumpy" lady instead? :)
I have also always heard that plenty equals fertility, but it's an interesting though to consider that only lumpy figurines were sculpted on account of the baking. Another possibility could be that all sizes were made, but only the lumpy survived the millennia. Probably not though. Traces would have been found of those neolithic barbies.
Either way, Botero ain't got s**t on these babies! :D
Haha! I bet Botero would love these ladies!
When looking at the level of detail and care put into some of these figurines, I have to believe that what the sculptors did was purposeful and had some symbolic value; big breasts, hips, thighs, buttocks, and bellies were important.
Maybe Neolithic women smashed the Barbie-types :)
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