michaelangelo's david was fitted with a figleaf. barbarians thwacked the dicks off classic greek statues. the japanese pixillate out cocks in their porn. satyr vases hide in museum basements.
why this long panic about guy's weenies?
this vital fluid erectory device is getting short shrift. we have two states and two contrasting acceptabilities. state 1: soft, almost ok. state 2: hard, usually obscene.
the lads in plato's time had a dual course too. 1: public sculpture with miniturized genitals (schlongettes?). 2: beasty satyrs with humongous hardons.
along with our double brains we have double attitudes. eros is so powerful and unpredictable we've split this force into sappy puppy love versus bull-savage uncontainment. we lurch between radical extremes.
what about a civil conversation between the two? a confluence. a meeting in geneva, as it were. first negotiations might be tense.
artists can help us out here. creators tussle with contraries, like jacob wrestling the angel. consider the rumbustious life and work of robert mapplethorpe. he roped a suppressed eros right back into the fine arts, hot and camera-ready. prudes were apoplectic. museums refused shows. southern senators fulminated. a curator was taken to court.
his art gave vision to the gay lib phrase 'the personal is political.' what shocked was unashamed pleasure of the flesh. and his crashing of racial barriers ('god ahmighty, there's black dick all over them museum walls.'). mapplethorpe's piece called "man in a polyester suit" raised delicious scandal. a knee to neck close up reveals a black man wearing a cheap suit, fly open, pendulous phallus on show.
there's more than a touch of humor to this work: "here's the forbidden thing. you'll have to change your life."
the satyr is freed from the cellar.
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