ABSTRACT
The penis both invites and requires interpretation, and just how it gets ‘read’ depends not only on the ways it's represented but also – and at least as much – by who is looking. Greek sculpture tended to de-emphasize the organ, pointedly undersizing it, as though it were an embarrassing appendage to Apollonian fantasies of male ideality. Greek vase painting often took the exact opposite tack with Dionysian representations of same-sex and opposite-sex play: erections abound, many of nearly comically exaggerated proportions, in some cases representing a satyr ejaculating. During the Middle Ages, illuminated manuscripts quite commonly represent male/female naked bathing, but with little more than matter of fact attention given to human body private parts. A number of artists, both male and female, from the early twentieth century to the present, have increased their attention to the male nude. Women artists, painters especially, in recent decades have taken up the male nude as a subject with considerable gusto.
