Many art historians have traced the transformation of prominent themes and motifs throughout the ages. The French critic Jean-Claude Lebensztejn follows the flow of one often overlooked aspect and that particular stream is made of urine. Pissing Figures: 1280 – 2014 takes a good look at how urine as a theme and medium of art has changed over the centuries. Based on the premise that art is a product of society and a reflection of its values, he demonstrates why the depiction and use of piss can be contextualized by analyzing how it is manifested in artistic expression.
This short little book begins with the most famous pissing figure in the world, Manneken Pis, the statue of a little boy nonchalantly directing his stream of pee in the viewer’s direction. It is the most (undeservedly) famous work of art in Belgium. The book finishes with Andy Warhol and his use of urine as a material in his Oxidation series of prints. Between the two is a unique parade of statues of boys pissing into fountains and baptismal fonts, urinating satyrs and naked baby Jesus peeing while being held in the Virgin Mary’s arms, alchemical cherubims, peasants relieving themselves in fields and drunks draining their pipes in taverns. Then comes modernism and postmodernism where pissing gets depicted as an act of pleasure, an act of violence, or both simultaneously. Finally we come around to the works of Andres Serrano where urine is used as medium to create photographs that are both mystical and offensive. The performance art atrocities of Paul McCarthy and the Viennese Actionists, who used not just piss but all the other bodily fluids too, get mentioned as well.
Pissing children were at one time a symbol of innocence and playfulness. Urine sometimes had connotations of spiritual purity, medicinal powers, and functioned as occult allegories in the practice of alchemy. Things took a darker turn when Michelangelo and Rembrandt depicted urination to attack other artists and degrade the peasants, likening them to domestic animals by showing them pissing and shitting in the presence of livestock. In the modern age, bodily functions became dirty, shameful, and something to do while hiding in private, so those activities and substances took on a whole new range of meanings when used in art.
Pissing Figures is a quick and easy read. Lebensztejn’s commentaries and analyses are minimal; most of the writing is descriptive. But the patterns are clear and the lean explanations tell you precisely what you need to know. This book is an indication that the human race has lost its innocence and will probably never get it back. In art there are no longer any taboos left to be broken and nobody knows what will come next. It is hard to tell if anything will come next at all. People are so uptight in our age that a return to the carefree Dionysian days when babies pee freely while drinking from jugs of wine would be more than welcome though.
Lebensztejn, Jean-Claude. Pissing Figures 1280 - 2014. David Zwirner Books, New York: 2017.
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