![]() While I can’t remember what the name of this place was called, these works of art were on display in an art gallery space set up near the Luxembourg Gardens. We went to several art museums while we were in the area along with several public art sculptures I’ve seen in both the City of Light and The Big Smoke (historical monuments and statues of public figures will be saved for another topic): Paris, France ![]() ![]() European Vacationįor the first half of the 2015 summer season, me and my family went on a two week vacation to Europe where we regrouped with our Dad who had nearly completed the final months of his year-long posting in Lebanon. The process doesn’t prove that the Venus de Milo actually spun, but it does offer a possibility and demonstrates an interesting way to reimagine classic works of art.Drawings made by school children for the giant pandas that were shown at Toronto Zoo from 2013 to 2018. Cosmo’s version suggests a better answer: that the tools were separate accessories made of perishable materials or precious metals and have simply been lost or stolen. Where did the tools go? Suhr argued that “the equipment of a spinner must have been a disturbing element to the artist,” who simply dispensed with the distaffs and spindles, assuming that “everyone in ancient times was sufficiently familiar with the process” to recognize the stance and gestures. Suhr identified many classical sculptures with poses suggestive of spinning, but none of them had implements. The re-creation provides a plausible answer to a question posed by the original advocate of a spinning Venus, archeologist Elmer G. Wenman realized that those spinning tools couldn’t have been made of marble because they would put too much weight on the arms, so he instead imagined them carved of wood. I also knew he had made a 3-D photocapture of the Venus from a highly accurate 1850 plaster cast now housed in the Skulpturhalle Basel in Switzerland. Using his own scans, I knew that he’d restored the lost nose on the Louvre’s Inoposbust of Alexander the Great and had remixed elements of classical sculptures in a contemporary bust he’d done for a client. Wenman has argued that museums should all release 3D digital scans of masterpieces because they’d allow other artists to remake the works in new, innovative ways. While it's impossible to know what the original Venus was holding, Barber's model shows her with and upraised arm, only a shoulder on the statue, holding a distaff (a tool that contains the unspun fibers) and her other hand steadies the thread pulled down to the drop spindle. Postrel describes how she hired the San Diego-based designer and artist Cosmo Wenman to do the job - figuring out exactly how the marble woman's arms were positioned. The result it a digital model, later printed table-top sized in white plastic by Shapeways, of Venus spinning. The idea of a spinning Venus de Milo can be tested using the latest technology: 3D digital scanning and printing. Also, women on Greek vases depicted spinning are actually prostitutes occupying themselves as they wait for clients. Women created thread, seemingly from nothing but a bit of fluff, similar to the mystery of birthing babies. Spinning in ancient Greece had associations with fertility and sex - fitting for the goddess of love and reproduction. Perhaps, Barber thought, Venus was spinning thread. One idea in particular piqued the interest of Elizabeth Wayland Barber, a professor emeritus at Occidental College who wrote the book Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years. Other versions imagined her using the shield as a mirror, the goddess of beauty admiring her reflection. One popular turn-of-the-century theory understood her not as Venus but as Victory, supporting a shield on her left thigh and recording the names of heroes on it with her right hand. She was even depicted as a mother holding a baby. She was pictured holding a mirror, an apple, or laurel wreaths, sometimes with a pedestal to support her left arm. She was imagined standing beside a warrior-Mars or Theseus-with her left hand grazing his shoulder. There have been many theories, writes Virginia Postrel for Slate: While her broken arms are now part of what makes her treasured, people have never stopped wondering what the original statue might have held. The Venus de Milo was claimed by France, and heralded as a prime example of classical art ( though it was actually Hellenistic) and now graces the Louvre Museum in Paris. She was uncovered in 1820, armless but beautiful, on Melos, an island between mainland Greece and Crete.
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