Say the Word: Clitoris
As a child, my mother chided me for speaking bluntly. She said I was tactless, a concept with which I was unfamiliar, and required explanation. This biographical detail has bearing on my critical thinking about semantics —as will become apparent. As a particular detail of my life-long inclination, the planet Mercury was transiting the fixed star Algol, the day I was born. Studying the symbolism of astrology, as an adult, I asked a seasoned interpreter what the significance of the dire transit might be to me. My take-away from the reading was that if I “ruled my stars,” the conjunction might signify (to me) a singular order of self-expression. Accordingly, my self-expression came to be ruled more by what I elect not to say, than what I say. The result which I aim for is to define a figure against a void background.
As a student of art, and art history, I asked a lot of questions that teaching faculty was at a loss to answer. It wasn't meant to put the teacher “on the spot.” I was clearly perplexed. It was, rather, that the question had never been asked before. An astute professor deflected one such paradox by advising me to read the Germans. Derided as pedants by devotees of art, they are famous for taking the subject well-beyond what might satisfy for the role of art museum tour guide. They're great debaters, willing to take-on the seam side of life, not merely the pretty side of pictures. Without meaning to be tactless, for tactlessness's sake, the professorial Germans are ideally tactless. Naturally, that suited me to a T.
The first German art-historical idealist to box my ears was Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945). 'Though it is probably unnecessary to explain that while he was Swiss—not German—his approach to art history was decidedly “German,” in the sense of the philosophy of German idealism. He taught at universities in Basel, Berlin, Munich, and Zurich, spreading his influential methodology. Not one to be content with cataloging names, dates, and places, he is known for a formalist approach to art analysis—emphasizing the study of visual form, composition, and style over iconography or historical context. His seminal work, “Principles of Art History” (1915), analyzed the evolution from Renaissance, to Baroque, art.
The key concept is that of evolution—dynamic history—not static (as yet another instance of his dichotomy thinking.) Wölfflin argued that stylistic change reflects an autonomous "history of vision," driven by internal, perceptual shifts rather than external cultural forces. Though his rigid formalism is now critiqued for overlooking meaning and diversity, his work laid the foundation for rigorous, objective art criticism and helped establish art history as a scholarly discipline. It is Wölfflin's hardheadedness regarding meaning in art that I now dispute, while loyal to his objectivity about the subject. So, when the title of “Principles of Art History” on a book's binding met my eye on the shelf at the library, I opened it again after so many years of independent, postgraduate study.
By chance, I opened the page with a black-and-white reproduction of a painting on the subject of Venus and Cupid, long in the provenance of the Colonna family, Rome. A curious choice of topic for analysis, by Wölfflin, one which reinforces his thesis on the rise-and-decline of art. Wölfflin contrasts the decidedly Mannerist painting against Michelangelo's formal perfection in style and iconography. Indeed, it involves a wrenching anatomical distortion for expressive effect, the absolute worst sin an artist might commit (in the Humanist-Idealist analysis of art), that of the youthful Cupid (Amor) stepping upon the pubic mons of the reclining Venus with his tender heel. It would be disingenuous to deny the obvious intent of the artist. At the same instant, we must infer that Wölfflin deliberately chose the example, however subconscious his intent in doing so.
Wölfflin certainly does not reveal that he “picked-up” on my observation. As disclosed at the start of this disquisition, I have no qualms about pointing-out the obvious, given my requisite absence of personal offense. We're analyzing a work of art, one originally intended to be provocative, and whose frank discussion is directed at neither Wölfflin, the artist (whose attribution is disputed), the viewer, the reader, or the wider Bourgeois public. I find it immediately ironic that the chief fault of the painting is its anatomy, when it is precisely the female anatomy which is the subject of the painting. Granted, Michelangelo was the greatest modern (not-Greek, or Roman) artist of the male anatomy. I reserve using specific words for the subject of the female genital anatomy not so much as a matter of sensitivity—assuming my reader is a consenting adult—as that the fully-explicit discussion of the subject is beyond the present scope.
Since my school days I have modified my estimation of Wölfflin—and German idealism—across the board. The “Venus and Cupid” presented by Wölfflin, in his “Principles of Art History,” is but one outstanding example of the thrilling—but hasty—dynamic historical analysis of the German scholars. Going by Wölfflin's example, it should be noted that the plate published in “Principles of Art History,” was painted-over at some point to conceal the naked Venus figure. In its current state the woman model's nudity is completely exposed. Wölfflin may be forgiven for that conflict. The plate's caption gives Vasari as the painter, without reporting doubts about its attribution, doubts that have circulated since its creation. Wölfflin is thus too preoccupied with theory to avoid conflict with the facts.
I find the censored version actually more explicitly sexual because the exact point of contact with the reclining woman's pubic anatomy is concealed. The semantic effect is not diminished in the restored image. It would have been an inexcusable blunder on the part of the artist—today designated as Ghirlandaio—to have painted the young Cupid's foot heel in contact with the cleft of the Venus figure's genital anatomy: bad form, pure-and-simple. As it stands, the anatomical point-of-contact may be taken as being the woman figure's pubic bone, a feature of the anatomy familiar to all women, and a great many men. One of the attractions of the study of anatomy to artists is the ready corpse—oneself—if not for dissection, but probing by hand. It hardly needs to said that the determined student of human anatomy may, with determination (and tact), obtain a willing participant of the opposite sex in the exploration of surface, human anatomy.
As a formal matter of art, the prominence of the male genital anatomy constitutes a superior subject of art—much as that of the great Michelangelo—than the almost entirely-concealed reproductive anatomy of the female human body. The discrepancy may be compensated by giving the gross form of the naked human figure a context, a narrative, establishing meaning –not limited to formal criteria of aesthetic excellence. Neither is this meant to turn the tables on Michelangelo, who deftly alludes to marital “foreplay” in his Adam and Eve detail of the Sistine Chapel murals. Really, what could be more tactful—more tasteful—than exposing the under-age to the reality of conjugal life than the silent art? And, as it is has ever been the purpose of the Academy to see that its alumni are perfectly trained, it is presented, here, in tactful form.