Reading List, Penises and Venus

Currently, I have the following on my reading list to gain more insights for the class.

The Story of Art (E. Gombrich)
The Uses of Images (E. Gombrich)
Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art (E. Gombrich)

All by E. Gombrich who, according to Dr. Miroy, wrote the standard art history book (The Story of Art). I still find his writing boring so I just look at the images but, hopefully, I get to plow past his language and into really good insights. I am, of course, willing to expand this reading list.

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Halfway into our reading on Greek Iconography and also in one of Gombrich's books, I just wondered why the hell the Greeks found small penises beautiful - which is, of course, in contrast with the modern-contemporary ideal of being well-endowed. This echoes onto Roman art and Rennaissance art and all so I just decided to actually bother with the question.

I texted my friend D and he told me that it was probably because the Greeks were boy lovers and having the features of a young boy was beautiful. And it did agree with what we read in mythology - the depiction of the handsome man as someone who resembled a young boy, a symbol of youth. The small penis is, of course, more associated with boys than with older men. The large penis was regarded as comical.



He went on and referred to Priapus - a person with a comically large penis. Wikipedia, of course, is the ultimate resource for those unfamiliar with the story (like me). Here is what Wiki has to say about Priapus.

In Greek mythology, Priapus (ancient Greek: Πρίαπος) was a minor rustic fertility god of purely phallic character, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. (Roman equivalent: Mutinus Mutunus.)
He was a son of Aphrodite by Dionysus, Hermes, or Adonis.[1]
One of the most famous images of Priapus is that from the House of the Vettii in Pompeii; it is a wall fresco in which Priapus is weighing his phallus against a bag full of money and it appears that his phallus is heavier.

Fresco of Priapus, House of the Vettii, Pompeii.
At Helicon in Boeotia, the travel-writer Pausanias pointed out a statue of Priapus that was "worth seeing".[2]
Sculptures of Priapus with large, erect genitalia were placed in gardens and fields to guarantee an abundant crop. For the Romans, his statue was used as a scarecrow and his erect penis was thought to frighten thieves. Epigrams collected in Priapeia (treated below) show Priapus using sodomy as a threat toward transgressors of the boundaries he protected like a herm:
"I warn you, my lad, you will be sodomised; you, my girl, I shall futter; for the thief who is bearded, a third punishment remains."
"... If I do seize you . . . you shall be so stretched that you will think your anus never had any wrinkles."

Of course, we can also relate this consideration of the large penis with the replacement of the primitive zoomorphism with the more recent anthropomorphism. The large penis is more animal-like and, with anthropomorphism as the dominant representation of authority and godliness, then it definitely does not fit the picture of the beautiful.

What eludes me is the fact that traces of zoomorphism still finds it way up to the modern-contemporary - an argument that could explain why we, today, now regard well-endowment as better than having boy-like penises. Then again, the larger phallus is also more apt as a fertility symbol - one explanation why the status of Priapus was placed in planting areas to assure good harvests.

Of course, homosexual intercourse forwarded by the Greeks was declared immoral at the dawn of Christian expansion and this contributes to the disappearance of boy-love.

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We discussed Botticelli's Birth of Venus yesterday. Of course, it was our first shot at a Rennaissance painting that is pretty popular (I mean, I saw it before so I guess most people saw it before). I am still just surprised at how textual/literary my approach is to art. I identified the basics - what is depicted, how are they organized, how are the elements used and all. Then, I proceeded into looking at the opposites, the binaries, the tensions. The issue of form and content. Is the painting generally a product of its time and how is this manifested? What are the allusions being made? What is the statement forwarded by the painting (the thesis, so to speak)?

Of course, these all seem like valid questions or points to be raised - its just that my scheme of attack for anything in the humanities (except philosophical texts) have been that - formalism and elements, tensions and binaries, sociohistorical analysis and structures of thought and all. I want to get past this and somehow enjoy the images as they are. And learn how to answer my teacher's question (What struck you?) without much deep thought and analysis.


P. S. The Venus here is an insistence/reiteration of the idea of womanly beauty of the period. I think that it is, like most things, a faithful product of its time.

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Phew. All of this history was inspired by an image - an icon.