Definition of PENIS
the part of the body of men and male animals that is used for sex and through which urine leaves the body


Origin of PENIS
Latin, penis, tail; akin to Old High German faselt penis, Greek peos
First Known Use: 1668

SELECTED PENIS ARTISTS

Many of the artists whose work includes penises and erections are homosexual men. For them the penis, the erection, the nude male body are objects of desire—and objects that they have not been allowed to show. When in the 1970s Robert Mapplethorpe began photographing naked male bodies or parts of bodies, often engaged in so-called transgressive sexual acts, it was not only an aesthetic choice but a political act. Formally his photographs are exquisite; the combination of elegance of eye with sexually explosive content is what makes his work both glamorous and important.

In his many photographs with the same title, Cock, penises are sometimes used as a design element, seen as the center and root of the man, thrusting out between dark, mysterious legs; or they're in close- up, partially bound in leather, so the cock skin looks supple and luscious. Man in Polyester Suit presents a suit-wearing male torso. The lines of the suit are boxy and straight-edged; everything is neat except that the fly is open, and a huge cock descends, like a tongue hanging out. Formally, the organic works against the manufactured. And the image has the wit of a wish fulfilled; it's what almost everyone really wants to know.

At the same time Mapplethorpe was working, Keith Haring was putting dicks all over his paintings. Because the paintings were deliberately childlike, and the images were of animals and children, no one thought to object to the phallic content.

Andy Warhol, going Renoir one better, sometimes mixed urine or semen with his paints, or literally painted with his prick. He also gave us the grainy black-and-white film Blow Job, which for thirty-five minutes concentrates on a man's face as he gets fellated off camera.

Another reason for the current focus on penises is a pervasive interest in the body as both source and subject of art. For heterosexual male artists, working with erect penises is a bold way of looking at sexuality. Andres Serrano's 1997 New York show, called A History of Sex, consisted of beautifully composed large color photographs of outrageous couples—an old woman and a young man, a big man and a pretty girl dwarf, a woman and a horse—in bucolic settings. Whatever these people may be doing —or about to do—their expressions are so serene, and they look like such nice people, that viewers are challenged to ask themselves, Why not? Someone holding his own quite large erection, who's outdoors with blue sky and water behind him, who's looking off pensively into the middle distance, a smile playing about his lips as if he's thinking about something funny his accountant just told him, brings the erection into the realm of images you can examine closely, and even discuss with your accountant.

Women artists have also been working with penis imagery, and for them it's not only a way of expanding the vocabulary of images we can see and talk about, it's also a way of confronting, or sending up, men. One early example (1974) is the "ad" Lynda Benglis placed in Art Forum, a full-page color photograph of herself wearing dark glasses and nothing else except a long, erect dildo protruding from between her legs. No words were needed.

Recently I visited Rhonda Shearer, who was preparing an interactive show with a penis motif. She wanted to play, she said, with our fears about looking at genitalia in art and life. Among the works was a mannequin of a little girl in a pretty pink dress with a big rubber dick under her skirt. There was also a wall with eighty-nine mostly very big talking dildos on it, which Shearer calls the Tunnel. The show's fun-house atmosphere makes prejudices against genitals into a joke—but Shearer told me men found the Tunnel intimidating. "When they realize that all of a sudden they're the sex object they tend to get quiet, or more introspective. It's an interesting turn," she said.



Source: The Book of the Penis by Maggie Paley

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