A staple of art history, the replica of Venus de Milo still appears in educational institutions worldwide. This one such particular sculpture is the one I know best. It is the one I worked from at college as a student, and its the one my students worked from, with nearly a decade separating the two instances.
And what of the replicas of this replica? With potentially hundreds of thousands s of studies taken of this one alone, and the influence it has had on developing the students' skillset is humbling. The diversity of reproductions of this reproduction; sketches, paintings, prints, casts, and photographs. Works produced by staff and students alike.
Notions of representation immediately spring to mind. How to represent what is already a representation, a likeness? How many infinite new forms will continue to derive from this particular effigy?
Using her as a muse one last time before departing my teaching role, she was my model during a solarisation workshop. Thinking about the step-by-step process I was demonstrating led me to think more broadly too, about the progression an artist will make in their life, their process from one point to another. How we develop as creatives, but can often stay tethered to our original or early subjects.
I soon left the sign far behind me, separated from it by the endless fields of space.
And I couldn't help thinking about when I would come back and encounter it again.
Italo Calvino, 1965
Venus has been a staple for as long as I’ve known at the College. Whilst it would be just to think of how, historically speaking, this male construct of beauty has shaped the gaze in the West, as well as the effects of this, right now I find joy in thinking only about the works of students and educators, equalled by their shared subject.
