The First Artists

In my third year of college, I made a radical proposal to my art history teacher in regards to the Venus of Willendorf figures from the Upper Paleolithic era (ca. 30,000 BCE). Unfortunately, it wasn’t my idea but was derived from an obscure article written by LeRoy McDermott. I told my professor that these tiny, stone “Venus” figures may not have been fashioned by men for the purpose of representing female fertility, which is the consensus in the majority of texts. These figures, I said, might actually be self-portraits. Why else would the face be entirely absent and the body so squat and plump despite the exceptionally chilly environmental conditions of the time? When a female looks down at her own body, the shapes are distorted and seem larger (McDermott 228). The legs are peculiarly short, the head is cast down, and the arms are unusually thin.

Just look down at your body now. What do you see? Boobs, stomach, and thighs even if you’re slender.
When I excitedly spilled this news to my professor, he hesitated and said, “Well, Tiffany, to carve those figures you have to have strong hands” (yes, “strong hands”–an actual quote).
Wow. Here was a well-versed art historian (and his classes were comprised of mostly young women) who had studied hundreds of artists, including women, having surmounted seemingly impossible barriers merely to be included in one, small paragraph (entitled “Woman Artist”) in an art history textbook. And he further added that women were too busy making babies in caves to make art. Here is the message to children who learn about the cavemen (not cavewomen, of course): men, being capable of cognitive function, invented everything, and women passively sat in caves and popped out crapping machines (okay, babies would be more appropriate, but this sounds more biting). In a more progressive classroom, a child might have learned that a cavewoman cooked too. What a grim future for young girls.


That the very first source for all of western humanity’s artistic
endeavors came from women was simply too much for these mostly male
scholars to handle. I suppose men think that a woman’s hands are too
weak for masturbation too.

The typical argument against this idea–that women were the first
artists–is stereotypical at best. According to this paradigm, the
figurines’ breasts and navels are accentuated in correspondence to “a
conception of women in the life and behavior of prehistoric man”
(McDermott 230). Men, in other words, like tits and ass. Their
oh-so-high sex drive is what motivated them to carve a female nude.
Apparently, no other group would be interested in the female body
because, let’s face it, females just find themselves to be a bore and
are intellectually too inferior to think abstractly enough to construct
an image of themselves. Why would females be interested in their own
sexualities, after all? (And in case you didn’t know, I’m being morbidly
sarcastic.)
No one ever questions a male’s actions in regards to exploring, not only
the female body, but any body. In fact, in the art world, it has a
label: the male gaze. A man, being the visual creature (yeah, right),
depicts and objectifies the woman, the object of his desire.

What if there was a female gaze? What if women might actually be
intrigued by the contours of their own bodies? What if a woman might
glance at a man’s rear and think, “I’d like to slap that ass. So hot!”
Okay, a little graphic, but I assure you, I can go farther.
Now some would agree that men do look at women as sex objects, and that
women certainly harbor a sexuality. It’s just different–yes, separate
but equal, right? Most of society has accepted that women are at least a
little sexual. But a woman couldn’t possibly have fantasies that
involve pushing a man on the bed and pouncing on him, and if she orgasms
without the necessary emotion involved when a “normal” woman makes
love, then there is something wrong with her. The appropriate fantasy
for a woman is derived from the “take me” philosophy. I, the woman,
will pretend I am innocent and passive, so that you, the man, can feel
more powerful while you conquest my body. I’m not saying that this
fantasy is wrong. I am saying that female sexuality has been accepted
as an existing force in our society, but not without being narrowed down
and compartmentalized into–surprise–a male fantasy.

What does this have to do with art? Everything. Even when a woman,
autonomous in both thought and feeling, produces a work of art that
portrays herself, our patriarchal world, unable to accept her
independence, must claim she was either (1) a man depicting a female
nude, or (2) a woman creating a form under the influence of the male
gaze. She could not possibly have been fascinated by her breasts and
torso; she was portraying a man’s desire and nothing more.

Contemporary times would be more consistent with the latter,
unfortunately (i.e. plastic surgery), but during a time before an
aesthetic even existed, before the advent of social stratification,
perhaps even before patriarchy, a woman was free to perceive her body
without the social garbage attached to it.

McDermott, Leroy. “Self Representation in Upper Paleolithic Female
Figurines.” Current Anthropology 37.2 (April 1996), p. 227-275.
http://www.jstor.org.

To see a picture of Venus of Willendorf, check out this link.

Venus
of Willendor

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

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