As if I don’t have enough work with keeping
up with the contemporary celebrity nudity in films, magazines, social media…, I
got this brilliant idea to start collecting sources of nudity from the past.
Paintings, sculptures, engravings, frescoes,
mosaics, prehistoric Venus figurines, illuminated manuscripts, coins, carvings,
ancient cave art, painted earthenware, jewelry, woodcuts… in short, anything
that was used to depict nude female form.
Today’s topic are prehistoric Venus
figurines, small statuettes from prehistoric times portraying women, that archeologist
excavated at various archeological sites all around the world, but my main
focus will be the ones discovered in the region of Eurasia.
Let me start up my time travel device.
First stop, -187 years ago, no internet, no electric motor yet for another few
years, but according to google, the birth year of the world’s oldest living person. It
happens, when everything is run by computers and there’s no one left to monitor
them. Come to think it, this site might suffer the same fate when I stop
updating it.
If I set my time dial to -2000. No Allah
yet, Jesus just finished high school, deciding which places to visit during his
ten year rumspringa. Maybe head south to see the pyramids, perhaps north to
visit the Athenian Acropolis, or go east, to visit the lands of the wise Buddha.
Next stop some -4000 BCE, and the pyramids
are gone. While some people were occupied with inventing the wheel, others
tried to figure out how to write down how they did it.
Go back another two millenniums and, hooray, we just invented beer. No, glass bottles or metal cans to store it
though, so perhaps a ceramic amphora will do.
Not much human records left, so I’ll just
jump to 35,000 BCE, the approximate date when the oldest of these Venus figurines,
Venus of Hohle Fels, was made.
Oh, look at that, the woolly mammoth made a
comeback, so did the woolly rhinoceros, and there’s a cave bear and watch out for
those cave hyenas scavenging its kills. Luckily, we are still in Eurasia and
not Americas, or we’d have to deal with saber-toothed tiger as well.
But the years of all these creatures are
numbered. Because the person who made the Hohle Fels Venus figured the mammoth’s
tusks are just the right material for his work of art, much more durable than
wood and easier to sculpt than rock. A person from another tribe was occupied with inventing flutes,
the wooden ones produced nice pitch, but a neanderthal choir using flutes made out femurs of a cave
bears, angelic. And how about that poor guy, hunting down hyenas because his
woman needs a new carpet every full moon. And let's not forget the guy whose performance
in bed was questioned, so a quick visit to a shaman for advice, and the fate of woolly
rhino was sealed.
Since there are no written records,
archeologist can only speculate why were this figurines made and what purpose
they served. Some say it was depiction of mother goddess (a personification of
nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction…), they could be fertility
objects, some of the figurines look like dildos, so they could be used as sex
aids, or in some kind of rituals I don’t even want to think about, one theory suggests
that the Venus figurines could be self portraits of women without access to mirrors, and so on
and on.
I’d probably go with the first one, a
personification of nature. Mountains, rivers, winds, zodiac signs, sun travel, rain,
snow, thunder, volcanic eruptions, comets, shooting stars, birth, death,
singing, stars, planets, Earth, Sun, Moon, floods, disasters, rainbows, sun
dogs, virtues, vices, traits… everything was deified or tried to be represented
in ways understandable to humans.
To my untrained eye and limited knowledge,
some of these figurines look like depictions of abundance (Venus of
Willendorf), Venus of Savignano reminds me of Matterhorn mountain and it was located there about, and some
younger ones, like the Venus of Falkenstein, Strelice, Idol from Ig, actually
do look like depiction of Venus planet itself, but in those times the planet was
probably considered a star, hence the spread of arms. The Willendorf Venus was
also one of the reason for my recent trip to Ethiopia. Saw this photo, and I wanted
to see where it all started. Then I saw this girl there, and the Venus of
Brassempouy shaped a different image in my head.The carvings on the Venus of Hohle Fels also came to life when witnessing a local ritual in a remote village, 1, 2, 3
I created a google map with 35 of these
Venus figurines. You can check where they were found, with some basic info, for
more, you’ll have to do your own research. I am not sure how long the google map will work though; Google climes I have 25,000 free requests a month for the map, but I have a feeling it won't be enough.
You can also check out other portions of
the above site if you’re interested in depiction of female form in art. The database might have some errors in it, since it’s a hobby not a job.
Movies to be released this week:Serenity 
(
Anne Hathaway,
Diane Lane)
The Kid Who Would Be King 
(
Rebecca Ferguson,
Denise Gough,
Genevieve O'Reilly)
Die Unsichtbaren [limited] (
Alice Dwyer,
Ruby O. Fee,
Victoria Schulz,
Maren Eggert,
Naomi Krauss,
Adriana Altaras,
Sylvia Buchbauer,
Tania Carlin,
Pamela Knaack)
The Final Wish [limited] (
Melissa Bolona,
Spencer Locke,
Michelle Burke,
Dey Young)
Werk ohne Autor [limited] (
Paula Beer,
Saskia Rosendahl,
Ina Weisse,
Ulrike C. Tscharre,
Jeanette Hain,
Johanna Gastdorf,
Antonia Bill)
In Like Flynn [limited] (
Nathalie Kelley,
Isabel Lucas,
Melanie Zanetti,
Grace Huang)
Bricked [limited] (
Shavonia Jones)
Jihadists [limited] ()
Serenity is rated R for sexual content; some buttock nudity is mentioned in extended rating.
German actress
Paula Beer is nude in movie Werk ohne Autor.
Ruby O. Fee is naked during a sex scene and shootout scene in action movie Polar which comes out on Netflix tomorrow.
Elizabeth Debicki is nude in movie Widows which was released on VOD. Blu-ray release will follow in a couple of weeks.
The Sundance Film Festival opens today. Likely, some nudity in films opening at the festival. I compiled a list of titles that caught my attention, but the list is on my laptop, hopefully. I’ll update the article with the list later today.
Well, I had to go through Sundance’s program again, since I forgot to save the list. Here are some of the movies from this year’s festival that caught my attention for various reasons. Some will probably have some nude scenes in it, like Mope, Animals, Ms. Purple…
Some interesting movies premiering at the festival:
- Big Time Adolescence (Emily Arlook)
- Brittany Runs A Marathon (Jillian Bell)
- Hala (Geraldine Viswanathan)
- Imaginary Order (Christine Woods)
- Luce (Naomi Watts)
- Ms. Purple (Tiffany Chu) In the dark karaoke rooms of Los Angeles’s Koreatown stripmalls, Kasie works as a doumi girl, a young hostess paid to cater to rich businessmen’s capricious whims
- Share (Rhianne Barreto) After a night of partying, high-school sophomore Mandy discovers that a series of cell-phone videos of her—half-dressed and semiconscious—have gone viral.
- Them That Follow (Olivia Colman, Kaitlyn Dever, Alice Englert) story about a snake cult
- To The Stars (Kara Hayward, Liana Liberato, Jordana Spiro)
- Judy & Punch (Mia Wasikowska)
- Dronningen (Trine Dyrholm)
- Los tiburones (Romina Bentancur) Two young lovers embark on a relationship while a rumor of sharks at the beach has everyone talking.
- The Souvenir (Honor Swinton-Byrne, Tilda Swinton)
- Animals (Holliday Grainger, Alia Shawkat)
- Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (Lily Collins, Kaya Scodelario)
- Official Secrets (Keira Knightley)
- Sonja - The White Swan (Ine Marie Wilmann)
- The Sunlit Night (Jenny Slate)
- Velvet Buzzsaw (Zawe Ashton, Natalia Dyer, Rene Russo, Toni Collette)
- Corporate Animals (Jessica Williams, Demi Moore)
- Sweetheart (Kiersey Clemons)
- Mope (Tonya Cornelisse) story about a wannabe porn actor
- Wounds (Dakota Johnson, Zazie Beetz)
- Adam (Margaret Qualley)
- Paradise Hills (Emma Roberts, Danielle Macdonald, Awkwafina, Eiza González, Milla Jovovich)
- Premature (Zora Howard)
- Selah and the Spades (Lovie Simone)
- The Death of Dick Long (Jess Weixler)
- State of the Union (Rosamund Pike)
Celebs in upcoming moviesMarch 1st
Fighting with My Family (
Florence Pugh,
Lena Headey,
Aqueela Zoll,
Kimberly Matula,
Thea Trinidad,
Leah Harvey,
Elizabeth Chihaia)
A Madea Family Funeral (
Ciera Payton,
Khaneshia 'KJ' Smith,
Aeriel Miranda)
Greta (
Chloë Grace Moretz,
Maika Monroe,
Zawe Ashton,
Isabelle Huppert,
Nagisa Morimoto)
Chaos Walking (
Daisy Ridley,
Isabelle Giroux,
Cynthia Erivo)
Climax (
Sofia Boutella)
Styx (
Susanne Wolff,
Inga Birkenfeld)
For a detailed review of all the movies, accompanied with pictures and video clips, where above actresses can be seen naked or semi-naked,
you should join Mr. Skin's website.
