Archive for April, 2008
Dropping Appendages
So, today, on “sick” leave, I took my daughter to see “Roman Art From the Louvre” at SAM. As usual, we managed to completely miss the “concept” and started yawning immediately at the overpowering presence of imperial art. However, at one point, the thing no one was pointing out became perfectly clear. And my ten-year-old daughter wryly pointed it out first:
“All the men are missing something.”
The disease of the missing appendage (and the castration of the imperial Roman Empire) had visited statue after statue. From Nero, to Caligula, to Jupiter, it seemed that no man, and I mean no man, was left intact.
There was no mention of this phenomenon on the little audio headset. None of the docents would divulge anything. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise in the tour group I managed to hijack for about ten minutes. Not even the security guards, usually good for something in a moment of boredom, would condescend to having noticed anything er, missing.
What is the cosmic value of this? When Minerva is missing a forearm, Neptune a nose, and the divine Jupiter a penis? A penis? In the span of history, what’s a penis?
It’s just that when they’re ALL missing one…and Roman art is so…IMPERIAL…and the critics are saying it’s so IMPORTANT…and the penises are all MISSING…well maybe I’m not feeling it. Maybe I’m not mature enough.
I can’t help but picture it: does some art thief have a box of appendages somewhere, in a dusty basement? And what of it? I wonder if, in light of the power of the Roman Empire, the actual size of the human penis seemed insignificant, unable to approach the grandeur of the symbol? The icon not representing reality, as it were? Phallogocentrism, without a center, as it were? Perhaps the Emperor himself dispatched a randy thief to take the penises, and hide them away from public view, lest anyone know the truth…
I’d like to find that box of penises and put it on display somewhere, calling it “The Emperor’s New Clothes: A Study in Retro Symbolism.” I’d mount the missing appendages, next to representations of the approximate size they were believed to be, with metrics relaying the difference.
And there would be sausages for sale at the cafe (snicker).
