Art

Is it Art?
Pissing Statues

I'm sure you've seen fountains with statues in the middle, with water coming out of a horn or a fish's mouth.  If you're like me, the thought has occurred to you, "There's an obvious place for water to come out of a statue, and that's not it."

Well, the creators of these statues had the same thought.

Although not part of a fountain, statues of Hercules pissing were apparently popular in ancient Rome.  Many have turned up, like this one from Herculaneum, which was buried by the same eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii.

The oldest working pissing fountain that I know of is this 17th century peeing boy in Brussels, Belgium, called the Manneken Pis.  It's now quite a tourist attraction.

But there are plenty of modern examples.  Mitlenberg, Germany boasts these three boys pissing into a rectangular pool.  Appropriately, there is a public restroom behind the statues.

This pissing angel in Knokke, Belgium, was sculpted by Wim Delvoye in 1995.  Well, you know, when you've been holding it for a while, the relief is heavenly.

In this 2004 fountain in Prague by Czech artist David Černý, the statues are mechanized: the two men's hips can swivel and their penises can raise or lower, allowing the streams of water to spell out words.  The pool that the men are pissing into is shaped like the Czech Republic, which is probably a statement about something.

This 2013 fountain in Helsinki, Finland, by artist Tommi Toija is called Bad Bad Boy.

This 2016 sheet-metal statue by Edgar Carmona in Fort Myers, Florida, is called Territorio.  Both the man and the dog are aiming for the lamppost, marking their territories.  It's not a fountain – no water comes out.

The prize for size goes to this statue of a 28-foot-tall Labrador retriever created by California artist Richard Jackson in 2013.  The dog is pissing on the Orange County Museum of Art.

And speaking of pissing on walls, we end with this 2005 statue by Danish artist Claus Carstensen, installed at the Panum Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.  He's not part of a fountain, but we know what he's doing.

OK, I've got to "go" now. 😊