Art - Part 3

Moche Pottery

The Moche lived in northern Peru from about 100 to 800 AD, before the Inca Empire.  Their graves have been excavated by archaeologists.  These graves contained pottery.  What the Moche considered appropriate subjects for their pottery was very different from what we're used to from European art.  Above, this naked man is a tame example.  Now, the Greeks and Romans created a lot of sculptures of nude men, so what's different about Moche pottery?

The Greeks and Romans didn't focus on the penis, but the Moche did, like the spout of this Moche pot.

A drinking vessel.  The upper rim is perforated, so you can't drink from the rim.  You have to drink from the penis spout.

Some pots depicted sex.  What was unacceptable in Western art seems to have been a standard subject for the Moche, like this blowjob.

Another blowjob.

Surprisingly, vaginal sex is almost never depicted, but many of the pots depict anal sex.  Was gay sex another standard subject for the Moche?  Apparently so.

Another pot depicting anal sex.

A pottery figure pleasuring himself with a dildo.  We have to wonder whether public blowjobs, gay sex and dildos were commonplace in Moche society.

Finally, some of the pots depicted dead men masturbating.  Apparently, in Moche religion, after you died you could still jerk off in the afterlife.

We end with another dead man jerking off.  That sounds like a very comforting religion.

Art - Part 2

Naked Art Museum Tours

Many museums have nude artworks that you can view.  Australian artist Stuart Ringholt (at left) has turned that concept ass-backward, so to speak.  He conducts tours of modern art museums where the art isn't nude but the viewers are.

In his tours, both he and the tour members are naked (and must be 18 or older).  The museum is closed to other visitors.  This is a tour of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.  Photos by Christo Crocker.

His tours are sellout events.  One suspects that the attraction is not the modern art, but the opportunity to exhibit yourself naked and/or to see the other tour members naked.

The artwork here is painted on the wall, called Sunrise #3 by Robert Owens.  I have to admit, I wasn't looking at the wall.

Ringholt has done nude museum tours at several museums, mostly in Australia.  This is a tour of of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.   Tour members are gathering in the lobby.  Photos by Christo Crocker.

The tour group goes up the escalator ...

... and down the hallway.  That's Ringholt in front, leading the tour.

On this tour, the National Gallery was featuring an exhibit by artist James Turrell, who makes art out of projected light.  This is "Virtuality Squared" (2014).

The tour viewing another James Turrell work.  What can I say?  It's modern art.

Here Ringholt is conducting a tour of the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane.

Where is the art?  Well, Ringholt is a performance artist, so one suspects that in his tours, the real art consists of him and the tour members.  There may be something to that.  Since ancient times, artists have considered the human body to be a beautiful thing.  Well, some are more beautiful than others.

But I think we can be excused if we'd rather look at Stuart Ringholt than the art.

Art - Part 1

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. 😊