Penises are a not uncommon feature of artworks — especially folk art and (of course) male art, but also “fine” art; especially as a natural concomitant of nudity, but sometimes as the focus of the artwork; and especially in works meant for private viewing, but also in public art. Occasionally, it all comes together, in pieces of public art that are about penises: giant phallic sculptures, wall paintings and the like. Phallic sculptures appear occasionally in this blog (or AZBlogX, if I’m not sure that the Fine Art Exemption applies to the case in hand), and there’s been at least one wall painting: an enormous depiction of a pendulous penis, in Brussels, in my 9/23/16 posting “News for penises and their simulacra”. And now this erect phallus, on Broome Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan:
(#1) Painting, signed by Carolina Falkholt, on Broome Street
[Photo of the penis mural removed. It turns out that it was from the NY Post, where it was credited to photographer William Farrington. Attorney Mathew K. Higbee is now threatening to sue me, on Farrington’s behalf, for large amounts of money for unauthorized use of the image (unless I settle out of court for $6750). Part of my response is to remove the image. There are quite a few photos of the mural, but they all seem to belong to entities that would require a royalty for publication on a blog. Several images of the artwork are on Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York Blog for 12/27/17, in “That Big Penis” by Jeremiah Moss.]
(Hat tip to Michael Palmer, who tells me that the work has already been painted over.)
From the New York Post on 12/27, “Enormous penis pops up in NYC”, by Kevin Fasick and Max Jaeger:
Meet the newest member of the Lower East Side street-art scene.
A towering painting depicting a shockingly life-like penis went up on the side of 303 Broome St. on Christmas Eve.
Swedish street artist Carolina Falkholt stood up and took credit on Instagram for the veiny behemoth — which lacks testicles but no doubt took cajones to paint — and said it’s really getting a rise out of folks.
“NO TIME 4 BALL$$ . . . I have never heard so much laughter and seen so many happy faces behind my back when painting as for today doing this wall on Broome Street,” the cocky artist [I suppose the pun was inevitable] wrote alongside a photo of the four-story masterpiece.
The work was apparently commissioned by art group The New Allen, run by Milan Kelez, who co-owns neighborhood Peruvian eatery Baby Brassa.
On the artist, from Wikipedia:
(#2) The artist, wielding a tool of her trade
Carolina Alexandra Falkholt, with the pseudonym Blue, born March 4, 1977 in Gothenburg, is a Swedish artist, graffiti writer and musician. Sometimes she uses her own coined term grafitta to describe her art. It is a play [on] the two words graffiti and fitta, the latter [meaning] “pussy” in Swedish but also [reflecting Swedish morphology, where an -a indicates feminine gender].
… In 2015 she made a huge mural as a commission for the high school Parkskolan in Ystad [on the southern coast of Sweden]. The painting Untitled (Firewall), [depicts a] stylized naked woman hanging upside down:
(#3)
I’d guess that no American high school has anything comparable to this work.
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