Hottentot Venus: The Story

“ Je est an autre” – I is another – A. Rimbaud

Saartjie Baartman was a Quena (or Hottentot) woman who was brought to Europe in 1810, to be exhibited for public inspection as an example of her tribe. Like many African tribes, the Hottentots were a significant part of ethnographic study during the 19th century. Indigenous tribes around the world provided cultural and intellectual challenges to European notions of civilisation, spiritual belief, and human body ideals – beauty and health.
The Hottentots were particularly interesting to Europeans not only because of the unpronounceable click in their language but also the physical characteristics of their women. The most significant of these were their external hanging genitalia and their large, pronounced bottoms – both of which posed a significant contrast to the bodies of women in Europe.

When she arrived in Britain and later France, Saartjie was confronted with the astonishment, curiousity and cruel heckling of a public that had limited contact with native Africans, but already had preconceived notions about them. In London Saartjie was displayed as a freak show display piece amidst the hairy women, vitiligo sufferers and obese people of the time. Since the freak shows were established on the premise of exhibiting difference, Saartjie was a marketable attraction.

Georges Cuvier, an anatomist who was familiar with the Hottentot natives, noted his astonishment about Saartjie in particular:

“What is striking about her shape is the enormous size of her hips, wider than 18 inches, and the protuberance of her buttocks, which was more than half a foot” – Georges Cuvier, 1817 Extraits dobservations

African women in particular were viewed as exotic and represented a ‘native’ eroticism, relative to ‘forbidden’ sexual life. In France, black women were used to promote brothels and their visual presence amidst white prostitutes on postcards and later in photographs, usually ensured successful patronage. Saartjie’s extreme physical difference to the established black prostitutes in Paris made her an instant target for lurid sexual advances.

Saartjie died of an infection in 1816 after prostitution and excessive alcohol abuse had consumed her body. Following her death, Cuvier made a cast of her body and dissected her brain and genitalia to be pickled in jars for ethnographic display at the Musee de l’homme in Paris. The jars remained on public display there until 1985, when they were finally put into storage.

The subject of Saartjie’s remains highlights the problematic history of acquisition and display in museums. Since Europe had a complex power relationship with Africa, it stands to reason that the development of ethnographic collections was driven by beliefs about Africans as savage peoples from a dark and uncivilised continent – notions which colonialism help to quantify.

‘Rare things or beautiful things here learnedly assembled to educate the eye of the beholder like never before seen all things there are in the world’ – Inscription Musee de L’Homme, Paris

Worldwide collections continue to grapple with the legacy of this history, and the foundations of the Musee de L’Homme were shaken when the Khoisan people (descendants of the Hottentots and Bushmen) officially asked for Saartjie’s remains to be taken back home. Since 1994, the museum has battled with the politics of her display and continued to stake their claim to her remains.

In a significant and historic feat, human rights activists, the South African government and the Khoisan people ensured that in 2002 her remains were taken back to South Africa where she was given a traditional burial.

Critical Response: Fola Odumosu

In visual culture, the female body is a plain across which notions of sanctity, temptation and paradoxically, revulsion are preserved. Whilst the white body wavers between the polarities of virtue and sin, as the adoring Madonna and penitent Magdalena, like all things dark and ‘mystifying’, the Black body is laden with sexual ambiguity.
One cannot explain why her breasts are full and pert, her hips and thighs thick and her bottom rotund and petruding, other than to serve as mans’ indulgence, a feast for his desires. And so the very nature of the childbearing physique of our African figurine, Saartjie Baartman, is exploited.

Let us talk about the arrangement of this image. The artist positions Baartman standing sideways to accentuate her body parts, she is nude and therefore objectified. But she is not a languid nude like Edouard Manet’s ‘Olympia’, instead she is upright, her body hardened by the tribal stick and her African-ness resolute. She is a showpiece for the spectator’s perusal. From this angle her breasts are made to look abnormal without the visibility of her nipples, somewhat masculine, but then it is as if her bottom (the source of her femininity) is made a separate entity upon which the cupid rides.
It can be noted that images of prostitutes come with specific visual signs-jewellery, the presence of animals and towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the cigarette. Therefore the strong iconographic presence of Baartman’s pipe is used to construct her phallic identity, making her a symbol of aggression and contributes to her sexual availability projected by the viewer’s preconceived notions of her sexuality through her pronounced form.

The irony set up by this caricature, is stated by the title Love and Beauty. If the cupid is synonymous with love, then Baartman is placed in opposition as our unlikely beauty. Since cupid warns us to take care of our hearts the spectator is asked to withhold their affections- ensuring that Baartman is only a physical object.

Hottentot Venus Links:

http://www.heretical.com/miscella/baker4.html

www.hottentotvenus.com

http://www.ingenious.org.uk/Read/Identity
/BodyImage/Curiosityanddifference/

Race and Science Links:

Petrus Camper on the Origins of Blacks
http://anthropology.uchicago.edu/han/han242.htm

Finnish site of Race and Anthropology
http://www.lyseo.edu.ouka.fi/suvaitsevaisuus/index.htm

Charles Darwin – The Decent of Man (Chapter 7: On the Races of Man – particularly the mixing of the races)
http://www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/the-descent-of-man/chapter-07.html

Mirror of Race – Early American Photography
http://www.mirrorofrace.org/