Venus of Willendorf
Claude Heath made these drawings of the Venus of Willendorf in 1996 from a plaster same-size copy of the sculpture, which was an object that he had grown up with.
While blindfolded, Claude used the fingers of his left hand to find his way around the Venus, and simultaneously recorded this onto a sheet of paper with his right hand. There was also some Blutack at the top of the model, to use as a starting point, and a corresponding piece on the paper.
Claude did not look at the sequence of drawings until afterwards, and this was the only attempt made at drawing the Venus. The model was rotated as he drew it, so the drawings represent the object turning through 180 degrees.
The particular panel shown here is the figurine in a three-quarters viewpoint, and the colors used were in order to show the different depths of the object moving closer to Claude’s own position, as well as the many contours of the sculpture. Thus, his sensations of the object were to some extent organized by color on the sheet.
The image shown here was bought by the Walker Gallery in Liverpool (MNGM), and has been reproduced in the catalogue for the John Moores Prize 20 in 1997. It also featured in (un)earthed, the book that accompanied the 2010 exhibition of the same name at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich in the UK. The original drawing is in a private collection in London. Copyright and reproduction permissions rest with the artist.
For more information about Claude Heath, check out these:
Reference to the (un)earthed book is as follows:
Bailey, D.W., Cochrane, A. and Zambelli, J. 2010. Unearthed: a Comparative Study of Jōmon Dogū and Neolithic Figurines. Norwich: Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts.