The fact is, a river of piss runs through art history.
September 20, 2017 9:10 PM   Subscribe

"Of course, the angels, being angels, feel no relief as they piss. They get their celestial jollies by raining a little holy water on us, but they know nothing of urination as a physical urge. If you want to enjoy some real salt-of-the-earth pissing, Lebensztejn reports, you have to skip ahead to 1600."

Dan Piepenbring, Web Editor for the Paris Review, has created possibly the most relevant piece of art criticism ever written.
posted by chinese_fashion (24 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
Beneath the pavement, the beach.

Beneath the painting, the piss.
posted by turbid dahlia at 9:19 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Man, that article REALLY pissed me off.

Well, better than on, I guess?
posted by Samizdata at 10:51 PM on September 20, 2017 [1 favorite]




“rather repulsive to smell when it’s not one’s own.”

Never did that man change a diaper.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 11:34 PM on September 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Dan Piepenbring

epeeniesterical.
posted by progosk at 11:49 PM on September 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


No Manneken Pis?

On this showing, not so much a river as a thin, disreputable trickle. However, the Rembrandt woman looks to be a really substantial work, so I'm glad to have been introduced to that.
posted by Segundus at 1:45 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Is this the new politics thread?
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:48 AM on September 21, 2017 [5 favorites]


Am I the only one who read "1600" and thought of a certain address?

Or is that the joke? It's probably the joke.
posted by quinndexter at 2:06 AM on September 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


Gauguin, Serrano, Calvin -- who's next?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:44 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


I really want to collect Calvin decals to piss on, because that's been my fav cartoon since I was a kid and I think it's such a bizarre thing to have happened to Watterson.
posted by gucci mane at 4:35 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Until just now I thought the statue on the New Order Technique album was Mannekin Pis, but it was apparently a garden ornament they bought somewhere.
posted by lagomorphius at 4:39 AM on September 21, 2017


Even Hercules pees in public.
posted by StickyCarpet at 4:48 AM on September 21, 2017


Just to note, I'm fine living in a world where a boy's piss isn't a benediction. I'd be perfectly content to live without such a blessing even were it otherwise.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:25 AM on September 21, 2017


Anyone who’s raised a son since infancy has probably already been the recipient of such a benediction. (You learn really quickly to cover the peen when you’re changing a diaper, or you get soaked.)
posted by caution live frogs at 5:31 AM on September 21, 2017 [3 favorites]


According to legend I was put nude on a cold metal scale and whizzed right up the doctor's sleeve. He had another shirt cause pee happens.

Mine managed to arc it down the vent that you couldn't reach into and the whole house stunk when the heat kicked on and the recently displaced dog decided she shouldn't have to go out in the cold and the damp anymore cause the whole place smells like piss anyway and nobody ever walks behind the couch anyway.

Damned infant untrained the dog.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 6:15 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


Anyone who’s raised a son since infancy has probably already been the recipient of such a benediction.

Robin Williams used to do a bit about holding his baby son for the first time: "He looked me right in the eye and pissed all over me. And I thought, 'Im a father now'."
posted by Paul Slade at 6:58 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


From the article:

That gaze took on a disturbingly literal form in the case of vases de mariée, porcelain chamber pots “at the bottom of which a wide-open, painted eye soaks up the sight of an invigorating shower.”

The chamber pots he's talking about were specifically designed for women. It wasn't the pee that those eyes in the bottom were supposed to be looking at.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:11 AM on September 21, 2017 [4 favorites]


What’s more, the image of Calvin peeing was nowhere to be found in the original comic: he was a piece of fan art. Seeing his impish grin in the Sunday funnies, someone had obeyed an irrepressible urge to stick it on a pissing body.
Not so much original fan art as lightly modified.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:01 AM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]


No.
posted by pxe2000 at 8:11 AM on September 21, 2017


are we sure he isn't taking the piss ?
posted by k5.user at 8:17 AM on September 21, 2017


Yesterday we had the Mad Pooper, today the Pissers. Where will this end?? Toilet humour at its best.
posted by mermayd at 8:18 AM on September 21, 2017


Even Hercules pees in public.

I'm trying to imagine the thought process of whoever commissioned that work, because no artist probably woke up one day and decided they had to do a heroic sculpture of Hercules taking a leak.

"And make it look like he's holding a stogie!"
posted by lagomorphius at 8:40 AM on September 21, 2017


this is the worst thing about art - fat cherubs pissing on you
posted by thelonius at 8:55 AM on September 21, 2017


童子蛋
posted by unliteral at 6:39 PM on September 21, 2017


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