You know of her, even if you haven’t seen her: The Venus de Milo, Aphrodite of Milos. She’s sculpted from marble, and her name alone speaks of a divine beauty unparalleled by anything mortal. And yet this most famous Venus is broken beyond repair: Both her arms are missing. As with many celebrated classical statues, our appreciation of the Venus de Milo is shaped by loss. The American writer Charles Fort explained, “To a child she is ugly. When a mind adjusts to thinking of her as a completeness, even though, by physiologic standards, incomplete, she is beautiful.” For archaeologists and historians, these incomplete masterpieces are a puzzle to be solved: Reconstructions of the Venus de Milo suggest her arms were in motion, holding a spinner with a This story is from Kinfolk Issue Thirty-Two Buy Now Related Stories Arts & Culture Issue 28 Falling Short Forget CSI. Hair is a notoriously tricky witness. Arts & Culture Issue 27 Day in The Life: Ramdane Touhami Once homeless on the streets of Paris, entrepreneur Ramdane Touhami now presides over some of the city’s finest addresses with his beauty empire. Arts & Culture Issue 50 Close Knit Close Knit: Meet the weavers keeping traditional Egyptian tapestrymaking alive. Arts & Culture Issue 50 The Old Gays Inside a Californian TikTok “content house” of a very different stripe. Arts & Culture Issue 50 New Roots The Palestinian art and agriculture collective sowing seeds of community. Arts & Culture Issue 50 Angela Trimbur An all-out tour de force.
Arts & Culture Issue 27 Day in The Life: Ramdane Touhami Once homeless on the streets of Paris, entrepreneur Ramdane Touhami now presides over some of the city’s finest addresses with his beauty empire.
Arts & Culture Issue 50 Close Knit Close Knit: Meet the weavers keeping traditional Egyptian tapestrymaking alive.
Arts & Culture Issue 50 The Old Gays Inside a Californian TikTok “content house” of a very different stripe.
Arts & Culture Issue 50 New Roots The Palestinian art and agriculture collective sowing seeds of community.
