COLLECTING URINE NOTES

 Knowledge is happiness, because to have it, deep knowledge, is to know what is real in the the stories we are told, the lofty ideas sorted from lowest self serving imaginings. 

Looking at The History of the Urinating Figure in Art 

Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, a French art critic, has written Pissing Figures, 1280-2014, a history of what he calls our "diuretic fantasies" embedded in western artwork — the pisseur and pisseuse and, most commonly in the earliest examples, the young boy. Images of urinating young boys, what art historians call the putto or puer mingen, first appeared in the margins of illuminated manuscripts in the 1200s. Before you become too offended, remember that European books and artwork in that period were almost entirely created for and used within the church. 

It was holy pee, you see. The putto were young angels, with wings, laurel wreaths, and streams of urine. In the first few centuries of European peeing art within Christian settings the putto appeared at parties and feasts. These were, ironically, depictions of Roman bacchanalia or Greek Διόνυσια co-opted as Christian church decoration. Life as an endless party, endlessly sprinkled by the cherubim. 

So the tradition of pissing on subservient underlings from 'great hights' in the Western word is steeped in tradition. The thing that has changed is that Kings and their noblemen have been simply replaced by politicians and bureaucrats and both think that they a 'angelic'.

And before we become offended by 'the language', remember that "piss" was the terminology of the King James' authorised English translation of the Bible. The version not always favoured by revisionist Christians.

Thinking about fountains in history, that 'object' that has has gushing water flowing from sea monsters and stamen of blossoming flowers is curious. Water has also been funnelled in streams from the sculptured phalluses of all manner of male figures – boys to men.

Jean-Claude Lebensztejn has dubbed such characters “pissing figures.” And, as he points out that, urinating is a consistent motif throughout Western art history, one that has taken numerous forms, and whose significance has shifted over time. 

Seeing a peeing fountain for the first time might be surprising, amusing, or even blush-inducing. Social conventions and etiquette, after all, have kept bodily functions behind closed bathroom doors for hundreds of years. We’re not generally accustomed to witnessing others peeing, even when they’re delivered to us in the form of a sculpture.

THE ART OF PISS TAKING

Fiammetta Rocco: "In the spring of 1917, when Europe’s armies were mired in bloody stalemate, Marcel Duchamp, a young sculptor who had fled France to join the roiling New York art world, took a porcelain urinal, flipped it on its back, signed his name as “R. Mutt” and christened the piece a work of art. He paid $6 to show it as “Fountain” in the inaugural exhibition of the American Society of Independent Artists. At an emergency meeting, the organisers rejected it. Though they prided themselves on championing everything new and progressive, this was too much. It wasn’t art. Or was it?

A little magazine called the Blind Man, co-edited by Duchamp, ignited a debate still running today. “Whether Mr Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He chose it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – and created a new thought for the object.”

THIS worldSILLYweek #12 PLEASE KEEP THIS IN MIND