Penises of Rome

OK, admit it.  We all do it.  We check out the crotch on those buff roman male statues.  Whether our interests are prurient or not, we just have to go there.

To combat the possible sense of lust, church fathers set the trend for covering up the offending pudenda with plaster fig leaves.  They are the smallest fig leaves I have ever seen, conforming tightly to the genitals... (speaking of which, have you ever noticed that Venus, the goddess of Love, doesn't have genitals?)  But why fig leaves?  The Bible states simply that Adam and Eve covered up their nakedness; it doesn't say with what.  Back to the origins of christian iconography, Adam is shown with a large fig leaf, not only to cover his sex, but also to hide where the navel should be.  An easy way out from a thorny liturgical question, as important at the time as say, how many angels could dance on the head of a pin?  Or did Christ's divinity come from him or through him?  (a major theological crisis which lead to excommunications, and schism).  So, if Adam was created by God, and not born of a woman, would he have a belly button?  The artistic answer was to hide that part of the body and call it a day.  A fig leaf did the trick.

Hunterian Psalter  English  ca 1170

With time and trends, the fig leaves are falling, sometimes exposing, er, not much.  The penis has fallen off in the intervening couple of thousand years.  (Former) Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was so concerned that the 2nd century AD statue of Mars gracing his office was minus the penis, that he had a restorer fashion a new one.  In keeping with the parameters of restoration and not permanently intruding on ancient material, the new penis is attached with a magnet.


Here are a few hanging around Roma (or not).

Oracle

Answering the how, the what, the why and other unfathomable questions of the universe has always preoccupied mankind.  Sibyls, Seers and Prophets hold a sacred place in our mythologies.  Of course the answers given are never staight forward and the signs and cryptic words are always open to interpretation.  Over dinner at our favorite chinatown noodle joint the other night, Joyce was playing with her new iphone.  "Ask it a question" she said, handing me the phone over a gently steaming bowl of fishball and hand pulled noodles.  I pushed the button, then asked "How do I become a famous artist?"  After a moment or two Siri's voice in a monotone with only the slightest hint of emotion replied like some modern oracle at Delphi -"here is a list of art supply stores in the area".
I guess that means I should keep painting...
Here are a few new ones:


Christopher Pelley  ITALIAN LESSON #1  oil/canvas   100cm x 115cm 

 

Christopher Pelley  RECLINING NUDE  oil/canvas  90cm x 120cm

Christopher Pelley  ANTINOO  oil/canvas   75cm x 90cm

Christopher Pelley  SIGN LANGUAGE (ITALIAN)  oil/canvas  60cm x 70cm

It's Our Pleasure to Serve You (video)

The iconic blue and white NYC take out coffee cup was the focus of  'It's Our Pleasure to Serve You' - an installation I did at the Vizivarosi Gallery in Budapest in June 2010.  On one side of the coffee cup the discobolus is featured prominently, his nudity now covered by some sort of gladiatorial skirt.  I am fascinated that an image of a sculpture created in the 5th century BC has remained in our visual vocabulary.  (The original bronze by Myron has long been lost, but a plethora of marble  copies in various states of repair still exist). 

I chose to re-interpret this image in a vocabulary unavailable to the not so distant past, but is now commonplace - a lo rez digital breakdown.  By hand painting each square, or digital unit, I have tried to re-assert a sense of the organic and unpredictable into something that usually resides in the realm of  mathematics.  Here is a video of the project (digital, of course)

ANTINOO (lost youth)



Christopher Pelley   ANTINOO (lost youth)   installation August 2011

Antinous.  The beautiful Bythinian youth and Emperor Hadrian's "beloved" (euphemism) drowned in the Nile in the year 130 AD at the age of 19.  Hadrian had him deified, had temples constructed in his honor across the empire and even built the Antinoeion, a complex of buildings and pools complete with an obelisk at his villa near modern Tivoli to enshrine the memory of this lost youth.

The image of Antinous fascinates me.  So after much looking at it, I began to deconstruct it.  This installation is a super lo-rez image of a bust of the 19 year old at Palazzo Altemps (Museo Nazionale Romano) in Rome.  The sculpture in itself is interesting merely by the fact that it was carved in the second century AD, then heavily "restored" (read re-carved) in the 18th century.  It now presents itself as the classical ideal of beauty as seen through 18th century eyes.   I have tried to interpret this singular bust from a 21st century perspective.  Each pixel of my lo-rez image is a 5cm x 5cm square of painted paper.

But why the resonance?  Why has this image continued to endure through the centuries while so many others have been neglected or forgotten?

Entering as I am into that period of life generously called middle age (another euphemism), I realize now that youth is something to be appreciated (like the lo-rez image) from a distance.

Christopher Pelley   ANTINOO (lost youth)  detail

Typography

Typography. The shape of letters help define an age. The perfect alignment and spacing of the majiscule of antique inscriptions, the increasingly huddled form of the late antique, and the expressive curves of the longobard gothic… They give us sense of time and place. There is nothing like standing in front of an imperial inscription of the first century. One feels the entire weight of empire behind it. There is an instinctive cowering when one attempts to read it.

Then there are a range of quasi-contemporary (very contemporary if you are looking at the breadth of the historical record here) shop signs in an orthography that one can only described as felliniesque. Only here in Roma have I seen these fonts. There is a joyfulness about them that can often mask the drama going on behind the shop façade. I stop and smile.  Is that a Nino Rotta soundtrack I hear playing in the background?

It's Elemental

The 4 elements.  They are basic, and well, elemental, and often overlooked today.  But sometimes its fun just to wander and watch them in action.  Here they are as I viewed them over a couple of afternoons - roman style.

Roman Laundry (the video)

Sometimes, it's good to see things in motion. The installation 'Roman Laundry (bucato alla romana)' took place on a sunny afternoon in May, 2011.  Still photography by Susan Kammerer, Kara Arterburn and Katie Morgan.  I shot the video footage.  You can hear my (barely)supressed voice saying "this is soo cool".