Before Christianity, Western art had its fair share of penises. Ordinary men were painted or sculpted with ordinary penises and gods were made with big, godlike erections. But in the respectable art of the Judeo-Christian West, which abounds in female nudes, erect penises have been conspicuously absent. Even flaccid penises aren't easy to find in the publicly accessible holdings of the grand Western museums.
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for example, there is no armor for the penis in the armor collection; the armor has an arch and a space where the piece to protect the penis should be, but the piece is missing. There are one or two small and barely discernible penises on friezes in the Egyptian wing, though it's clear the ancient Egyptians were not shy about showing erections. The penises on the Greek vase paintings are small and sketchy, and are usually sported by creatures who also have tails. In the European painting galleries there are no naked adult penises. There are cherubs and Cupids with baby dicks, and a fair number of renditions of the baby Jesus' penis. Most modern people, though, when they look at paintings of the baby Jesus, don't think of his penis as a penis. (In the Renaissance, as Leo Steinberg demonstrates in an exhilarating monograph, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, the motive was theological. Painting after painting shows the baby Jesus sitting on his mother's lap, his penis exposed, his mother pointing to it with pride. His penis is proof that he has "embodied himself in a human nature," becoming "mortal and sexual" for the sake of mankind.)
In the section of the museum devoted to tribal art there's only one exhibition with a bunch of realistically juicy dicks. These belong to some life-size figures made for the death ritual of the Asmat people of New Guinea. The figures are carved standing, one on the shoulders of another, and the carvings are placed outside the house of someone who dies. When a head-hunting expedition takes place, fresh heads are placed in the gaps in the sculpture. The standing figures have hefty, hanging- down penises.
The only other dicks are on nude Greek and Roman statues. Some of them are small and quiescent, with carved pubic hair and baby balls. The rest have been broken off.
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for example, there is no armor for the penis in the armor collection; the armor has an arch and a space where the piece to protect the penis should be, but the piece is missing. There are one or two small and barely discernible penises on friezes in the Egyptian wing, though it's clear the ancient Egyptians were not shy about showing erections. The penises on the Greek vase paintings are small and sketchy, and are usually sported by creatures who also have tails. In the European painting galleries there are no naked adult penises. There are cherubs and Cupids with baby dicks, and a fair number of renditions of the baby Jesus' penis. Most modern people, though, when they look at paintings of the baby Jesus, don't think of his penis as a penis. (In the Renaissance, as Leo Steinberg demonstrates in an exhilarating monograph, The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion, the motive was theological. Painting after painting shows the baby Jesus sitting on his mother's lap, his penis exposed, his mother pointing to it with pride. His penis is proof that he has "embodied himself in a human nature," becoming "mortal and sexual" for the sake of mankind.)
In the section of the museum devoted to tribal art there's only one exhibition with a bunch of realistically juicy dicks. These belong to some life-size figures made for the death ritual of the Asmat people of New Guinea. The figures are carved standing, one on the shoulders of another, and the carvings are placed outside the house of someone who dies. When a head-hunting expedition takes place, fresh heads are placed in the gaps in the sculpture. The standing figures have hefty, hanging- down penises.
The only other dicks are on nude Greek and Roman statues. Some of them are small and quiescent, with carved pubic hair and baby balls. The rest have been broken off.
In 1993, when the Metropolitan Museum showed the larger-than-life-size male nudes of the English painter Lucian Freud, they put up a sign warning there would be nudity, even though none of the nudes had an erection. No such sign would be necessary for a show containing female nudes; female nudes are all over the museum.
Obviously, up until recent years most Western men have not wanted to represent penises, particularly erect penises, in their art; they also have not wanted to show the art of other cultures in which penises are prominent. One way of seeing this phenomenon is in terms of who does the looking and who is looked at. Traditionally women have been the objects and men have painted them or owned the paintings. Renoir's famous retort, when asked by a journalist how he could paint with his crippled hands, was "I paint with my prick." Like the sex act, in which the man is always said to possess the woman and never the other way around, such an arrangement can be seen as an expression of power. It's a different sort of expression from the exuberant erections of pagan times. We think of it as more civilized and therefore less threatening—but all it is, really, is more covert.
And the male position of powerful nondisclosure exacts a price; it makes men afraid to show what they're really like—and men and women afraid to see them naked. In the art world of the late 1990s this position has come seriously unraveled.
Source: The Book of the Penis by Maggie Paley
Obviously, up until recent years most Western men have not wanted to represent penises, particularly erect penises, in their art; they also have not wanted to show the art of other cultures in which penises are prominent. One way of seeing this phenomenon is in terms of who does the looking and who is looked at. Traditionally women have been the objects and men have painted them or owned the paintings. Renoir's famous retort, when asked by a journalist how he could paint with his crippled hands, was "I paint with my prick." Like the sex act, in which the man is always said to possess the woman and never the other way around, such an arrangement can be seen as an expression of power. It's a different sort of expression from the exuberant erections of pagan times. We think of it as more civilized and therefore less threatening—but all it is, really, is more covert.
And the male position of powerful nondisclosure exacts a price; it makes men afraid to show what they're really like—and men and women afraid to see them naked. In the art world of the late 1990s this position has come seriously unraveled.
Source: The Book of the Penis by Maggie Paley
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