The Problem Of Penile Presentation

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.
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