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The Problem of Penile Presentation

By: Cal Y. Pygia



There is a great bias, in erotica, pornography, glamour photography, and visual art in general in favor of female nudes, and many women are, indeed, beautiful. However, for visual art (drawings, paintings, sculptures, photographs) created for heterosexual women, bisexuals, and male homosexual viewers, the male nude is, of course, the central concern. Artists, whether their subject matter is male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, use the same techniques, designs, and strategies to depict their models to the best effect, to make them as pleasing to the eye as possible, and to suggest, at times, at least, the importance of the image beyond itself. With regard to visual art that, featuring male models, includes a depiction of the penis, the matter of penile presentation asserts itself. How, artists must decide, should the penis be represented and shown? Should it be erect, semi-erect, flaccid? Circumcised or uncircumcised? Should primary consideration be given to length or girth? Should the penis belong to an African-American, an Asian, or a Caucasian? Should it be the appendage of a male or a shemale? How should it be lighted? What properties, or "props," if any, should be shown with it, and why? How should the penis be integrated into the rest of the composition? How can the penis best be shown as virile? As an aesthetic object? These are but a few of the challenges that penile presentation involve. Let's examine some artists' solutions to this problem.

One approach is to leave the penis out altogether, and show, from the rear, merely the testes-stuffed scrotum, resting upon a mattress, between spread thighs, with, perhaps, the perineum and a glimpse of the anus above, between slightly spread buttocks. This is an interesting solution, especially for gay viewers, because it isolates the testicles from the penis, focusing the viewer's attention upon the gonads, which are the very essence of both masculinity and virility, the centers and sources of male potency and fertility. At the same time, though, the glimpse of the anus between the slightly parted buttocks suggests a chink, as it were, in the armor of the model's masculinity. Despite his virility, he may be vulnerable to attack, to penetration, to occupation. He may, in short, be subject to being taken, to being fucked, to be being treated like a woman, to being conquered and feminized. This image has conflicting, if not contradictory, implications which point to the androgynous nature of men as obvious males and, yet, paradoxically, at the same time, potentially surrogate females.

A similar tactic is to show the scrotum not compressed by its being flattened against a horizontal surface, such as a mattress, but hanging freely, the balls seemingly heavy inside the loose and suspended flesh of the relatively unwrinkled, pouch-like container. The buttocks, if parted, again permit a glimpse of the anus, and, if the underpants are shown pushed down, around the thighs, the image is clearly one of invitation: in the model's posture, as in his nakedness, the message is clear--he awaits penetration. Once again, from a different vantage point, the male is shown as a subject who may be taken, who may be fucked, who may be treated like a woman, who may be conquered and feminized. Like the first picture, this image has very similar conflicting, if not contradictory, implications, which point to the androgynous nature of men as obvious males and, yet, paradoxically, at the same time, potentially surrogate females.

Let's consider another means by which the problem of penile presentation has been resolved by an artist. In the picture before me, the model's lower abdomen, from a few inches above his navel down, and his thighs, to just above the knees, are shown in a three-quarters-full view, his upper body being turned to the right. His left arm lies along his side, the hand against his thigh. Amid a flurry of dark-brown pubic hair, his balls nestle between his thighs, his erect cock rearing from his groin. The veins are visible through the taut flesh of his standing prick. Abdomen, arm, and thighs descend, as it were, in a diagonal from left (top) to right (bottom), a direction that is diametrically opposed to that of the erection, which juts upward, from left (bottom of shaft) to top (glans). This contrary direction draws attention to the erect penis, for the prick goes against the direction that the rest of the images (and its appendages, the arm and thighs) take. The penis, this presentation, suggests, is unruly and independent, perhaps wild and uncontrollable, and since the penis (and the testicles) is the very essence of masculinity, manhood itself, the suggestion is that men have these same qualities, that they, buy nature, are likewise unruly, independent, wild, and uncontrollable.

Another penile presentation solution is to show the lower belly, the pubes, and the upper thighs, with the cock standing stiff, but bowed backward, like a banana, and the contour of the right testicle an arc beneath the base of the prick. This view of the penis also focuses the viewer's attention upon the organ, for, while most dicks are more or less straight, this one is unexpectedly (and rather excitingly) curved, and the unusual always excites attention. This approach is a simple, but effective, one.

Not many artists use props in penile presentations, but one that does do so employs a rectangular configuration of dowels. The model stands inside this apparatus, his left arm raised and bent at the elbow, hand clutching the upper end of one of the rectangle's dowels. The uppermost horizontal rod crosses his shoulders, the left vertical pole lying alongside his right arm, which is also bent at the elbow so as to allow his right hand to lie across the two vertical dowels that run across the midpoint of the rectangular frame. His cock stands up, parallel to the vertical poles but at a right angle to the two that runs vertically from the left to the right vertical rods. His thighs also parallel the vertical dowels, so that the eye is caught in this thicket of seemingly tangled limbs and rods. The testicles rest against the uppermost of the twin dowels that run across the middle portion of the frame, but the penis itself rears free, the theme seeming to be that, although a man's body--and a man's nude body, at that--can be imprisoned, male sexuality never can be captured or restrained. To make the model stand out more, his body, framed by the wooden frame, is displayed against a blue background splotched with fluffy bands of white, almost as if he were standing against a cloudy sky. The suggestion of sky adds to the suggestion of his freedom, the whole picture an ambiguous image of capture and liberty, of restraint and unrestraint, of imprisonment and freedom.

Another means by which the penis may be displayed is to focus exclusively upon it, as one image does, showing the erect organ, close up, as it juts from a barely visible nest of tangled red pubic hair inside which the scrotum, a rounded mass truncated by the suggestion of a thigh (lost, alas, to the left border of the picture). The prick fills two thirds of the available space, showing fine, horizontal wrinkles along its erect shaft, a bulging vein, the scar tissue of the member's circumcision, and a lovely glans. The size of the display, and its isolation from most of the rest of the model's anatomy, as well as the absence of any props, background, or setting makes the viewer's mouth water. Such single-minded focus makes the models cock not a mere penis, but The Penis, the Platonic Ideal, or Form, of the true and perfect, eternal Penis, the Penis as it exists in the very mind of God, its Creator. O! he or she thinks, if only such a magnificent specimen of manhood might the touched, kissed, licked, and sucked!

The problem of penile presentation has been solved in numerous other ways. Indeed, the methods by which the display of the penis in visual art are accomplished are as numerous as there are imaginative visions for such display, and artists worthy of the name are seldom, if ever, at a loss in devising a new means to showcase the virile member, whether in drawings, paintings, sculptures, photographs, or other c=visual media. I could describe many other examples than those I have already mentioned. However, I will close this essay with a description (for the time being, at any rate) of just one more. In this photograph, once again, but a portion of the model is shown: his lower belly, his shaved crotch, the very tops of his thighs, and his erect cock and tightly contracted, risen scrotum, clearly delineating the walnut-size testicles within the drawn purse. The pubes have been shaved, but the hairs are starting to grow back; they stand out, dark, like short brush strokes upon a peach-colored canvas. The rosy penis, lined and festooned with swollen blue veins, rears up, against the lower belly, to which, among the new hairs are dollops and splotches of semen, freshly deposited by the rigid, standing member. The only prop is a white blanket, visible only at the upper right edge of the picture, spotted as with the pattern of the leopard. The prop suggests that it is not only nubile young women who are cat-like; young men are also feline, albeit not in a cute and cuddly, but harmless, way, but in a dangerous and predatory, bestial fashion. The nearly balls pubes and the pink-and-peach flesh that is backdrop to the rosy penis, highlights not only the risen, discharged penis and the red, raw-looking balls, but also the semen that decorates the lower abdomen. The ferocity of the male animal is the source, this portrait suggests, of the pearly jewels with which his manhood is adorned.

The problem of penile presentation is an aesthetic and a social one. Contemporary American society does not countenance displays of male genitals (especially in their erect state), although this prejudice is beginning to dissipate in the wake of a humanistic concern for sexual equality for all. It may be that the display of the penis and testicles may become as commonplace and accepted--indeed, as celebrated--as it was in the days of ancient Greece and Rome. Until them when the display of the penis may be done for its own sake, artists--especially visual artists--are well advised to depict the male genitals in such a way that the masses won't find offensive. By linking penile displays with manhood itself, artists seem to have found a way to have their cake (or cock) and eat it, too, so to speak. They get to show the cock, in all its glorious erection, and, in doing so, they use its display to symbolize certain traits that are linked to masculinity: virility, unruliness, independence, wildness, and uncontrollability, ferocity, danger, predation, bestiality, unrestraint, liberty, and freedom. The penis may even become The Penis--the very thing, the organ itself, that God had in mind when he created men's cock and balls and the Ideal, or eternal Form, by which flesh-and-blood cocks and balls retain whatever measure of the divine notion of masculinity, virility, and manhood with which this Form informs them.

In addition, artists are concerned, of course, with portraying the penis and the testicles as things of beauty. They often do so in the same way that breasts, vaginas, and female buttocks are portrayed as beautiful--by associating them with things of beauty, showing, for example, semen that resembles melted pearls, the rosy hue of the erect prick and the risen pouch of the reddened scrotum, the plum-purple color of the "ripened" glans, the marbled column of the penile shaft. The male genitals may be associated with outdoor settings or with rugged props suggestive of earthiness--mountain crags, gnarled trees, boulders, cacti; beasts such as bulls, stallions, bears, serpents; or artifacts of human design, such as locomotive engines, hammers, plows, swords, guns, or lances and spears.

Perhaps I will provide additional chapters of this essay, but, whether I do or not, I hope the reader discerns that artists, in responding to the problem of penile presentation, have done an admirable job of representing both the power and the beauty of the male member and the masculinity and manhood for which it stands.