Page 74 - All About History - Issue 186-19
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Image source: wiki/The National Gallery, London The slash marks on
the Rokeby Venus
can still be seen
thanks to Mary
Richardson and her
meat cleaver © Getty Images
remarkably consistent how the body of Venus has How does the way Aphrodite-Venus is Is there one portrayal of Aphrodite that fits
changed very little down the centuries. But when remembered and thought of today differ to how you see her?
she started out in prehistory, she was incredibly how she was actually revered in antiquity? She’s so multivalent, I don’t have one image of her.
feisty with a bird’s face and feet. She was You didn’t mess with Aphrodite, so the idea that I don’t think of her as one thing. Nonetheless, I do
ferociously naked and a very different creature in you’d pop her on a Valentine’s card or write a love the fact that on Cyprus she’s represented in
the prehistoric world. pop song about her – you’d be struck down by a some sanctuaries with a beard. I just think that’s
thunderbolt by one of her many god lovers! There so ahead of its time, this notion that we all have
Could you explain a little about how the was much more respect. There was more respect a bit of male and female in us and they recognise
suffragette movement viewed the goddess for the idea of where desire can take you for good that. That’s one of my favourite images of her.
and her audience in the early 20th century? and for bad. It wasn’t pretending that desire didn’t
One suffragette, Mary Richardson, was amazing, happen, it was actually putting desire at the centre In your research for the book, was there
walking into the National Gallery with a meat of the conversation about what it is to be human. anything that surprised you about her?
cleaver and slashing a portrait of Venus. It I wasn’t expecting a connection to the Virgin
definitely makes a statement – you can still see the “ It’s mad that we Mary. If you go to one of those monasteries in
slash marks. She just couldn’t bear the way men Cyprus on the hill of Aphrodite, they’ll strap on or
gawked at it all day. On the whole, the suffragette don’t know that she’s give you access to a silver girdle, which they say
movement had a slightly conflicted relationship Mary had sort of inherited from Aphrodite, who
with Venus. On the one hand, they wanted to an Eastern goddess” used it to help with fertility problems. I wasn’t
adopt her because she’s a strong woman. But that expecting her to live on in that kind of popular-
action of Mary Richardson really changed things culture way.
– it was genuinely a bit of a #MeToo moment – as
it showed that the female body shouldn’t be used All of the things that Aphrodite’s involved with in What’s one thing that you’d like readers to
to excite the male gaze in that way. Aphrodite goes the stories of suicide and unrequited love, incest take away about the goddess after reading
from being an ally of women to almost a traitor and pederasty – her purview is very dark as well Venus and Aphrodite?
to them in how she’s portrayed as a figure of as light. The Greeks and Romans were much Remember that, as Euripides described her, she’s
subjugation rather than empowerment. better in admitting that those impulses are with greater than all of the gods. If I look at societies
What really interests me is if you look at 1960s us in society. She looked after what we do with that work, they’re societies that put love at the
and 1970s feminism, when she’s reappropriated desire in the community politically, militarily, centre of their operations. I don’t mean a kind of
again as that same woman symbol, it’s actually socially, culturally, sexually, so she’s often called soppy, romantic love, I mean a passion to be the
Aphrodite’s symbol, and it’s used by the feminist Aphrodite Harmonia, or Aphrodite of Harmony, best people we can and to love those around us
movement often with a fist of power in the and Aphrodite of Union. There’s a really interesting in the best way we can. As the Greek tragedians
centre of it. So she is around, but in more ways notion about how we generate the ties that bind us recognised, as a unifier of humans she’s the
than we realise. together – she’s a very useful goddess still. greatest and most powerful of all the goddesses.
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