Word: phallic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...these is Goldfish and Palette, 1914. That Cubist-inspired trestle of black strokes on the right is Matisse, holding a white palette through which his phallic white thumb protrudes. But the real importance of this work and others from about this time lies in the sweeping "background" that occupies most of the canvas. In this one, broad areas of blue, white and black dissolve deep space into allover optical force fields, a gesture that opened the way to the color-field abstraction of a half-century later. Picasso replied with Harlequin, a self-portrait as clown, painted in a moment...
Such questions are especially troubling given the long and distinguished history of phallic imagery in art. The greatest poets of ancient Greece, for example, used the phallus liberally. In Aristophanes’ comedy “Acharnians,” the protagonist Dikaiopolis holds a religious procession with a model phallus and sings a bawdy song called the phallikon in Greek. He instructs his slave to hold a “phallus-pole” up stiff and straight and sings an ode to the “midnight rambler and carouser.” The phallus procession...
...Cleopatra in the Adams House Pool while it was still used for swimming, a move The Crimson’s 1978 review called a “vigorous, probing, playful approach to college theater.” The two lovers acted on floating rafts, with a strategically located phallic diving board. Cleopatra dunked the messenger who told her of Antony’s marriage to Octavia...
...sheer chutzpah, nothing can top the final exhibit, Zhang Hongtu's Studs. A big, red door, slyly reminiscent of the crimson gates that once kept the Forbidden City forbidden and now protect the Party leadership compound. But in Zhang's work, the door's elaborate iron studs have become phallic pipes frozen in, as the artist delicately puts it, "states of inadequate erection." So much for vigorous leadership. But if the First Guangzhou Triennial is any indication, China's experimental art scene is more virile than ever...
...this fantasizing really good for us? Should we worry about all these strapping men poking each other with sharpened phallic symbols? After all, on the political correctness meter The Lord of the Rings is radioactive. Where are the women? Peter Jackson filled out Liv Tyler's role for the movies (it's much less prominent in Tolkien's version), but the Fellowship is still as much a boys' club as Augusta National. And whiter too. Don't let all the heartwarming Elf-Dwarf bonding between Legolas and Gimli fool you. The only people with dark skin in Middle-earth...