Conception (Sexual and Mental)

The poet’s pen is in some sense a penis, wrote a literary critic. “[T]he patriarchal notion that the writer fathers his text just as God fathered the world is and has been pervasive in Western literary civilization.” That is how she expressed the common link between male writers and the female body in early modern Europe. The English poet Philip Sydney (1554-86) wrote in a sonnet that he was “great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes (child labour).” John Milton (1608-74), described as a “phallic poet extraordinaire”, also made analogies between the “issue of the brain” and “the issue of the womb.”{ref1}

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It is difficult for us to imagine this but in the Renaissance ordinary people assumed that the process of human thought mirrored on a smaller scale God’s creative acts in Genesis. Our minds were a microcosm of the macrocosm. That is how and why Michelangelo turned the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling panels on God’s creation of the world into the self-referential thought processes of his own imagination.{ref2} Even Renaissance medical terminology made use of this link, naming the cavities of the brain ventricles, thus little bellies or little wombs.{ref3}

Nowhere, though, is the link between human sexuality and the mind’s activity more clearly nor more repeatedly stressed than in Shakespeare. Again and again the Bard makes bawdy jokes as entertainment for the groundlings that on another level indicate the generation of ideas within his own mind and those of his characters. “Shakespeare revelled in the knowledge of his creative powers", wrote Elizabeth Sacks. "I would further contend that he transferred this creativity to almost all his characters, in that they also can generate and give birth to thoughts as well as to children.”{ref4} Most significantly, imagination in the Renaissance was said to be “bred in the eyes.”{ref5} In fact, in the fifteenth century it was common to refer to an artist's initial sketches as a concepto, an esempio or a modello. Art historians have noted how these terms and their cognates seem to have implied the mental image of the artist, the scene in their mind, and by the middle of the sixteenth century the idea that drawing was a record of mental activity was beyond question.{ref6}

Sexual intercourse, conception and pregnancy have been long-running metaphors in both literature and art as ways to describe the mind’s processes. Yet vision is such a powerful illusion – and painting sometimes so similar to what we see through our own eyes – that we often fail to differentiate in art between the object described and its underlying metaphor. That is what has happened with Titian’s Venuses and Manet’s Olympia, scenes taken for a description of reality but which, in their poetic meaning, are metaphors for the artist’s own conceptions.

1. Katharine Eisaman Maus, “A womb of his own: male Renaissance poets in the female body” in Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Europe, ed. J. G. Turner (Cambridge University Press) 1993, pp. 266-7

2. See Abrahams, "Michelangelo's Art Through Michelangelo's Eyes" (in 3 parts).

3. Elizabeth Sacks, Shakespeare’s Images of Pregnancy (New York: St. Martin’s Press) 1980, p. 4

4. Sacks, op. cit., p. 21

5. Sacks, op. cit., p. 25

6. Michael Cole and Mary Pardo, "The Origins of the Studio" in Cole and Pardo (eds.) Inventions of the Studio: Renaissance to Romanticism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press) 2005, p. 7

All Articles (Alphabetical by Artist, then Title)

Is this merely a scene of everyday life or something more important?

Aertsen’s Cook in front of the Stove (1559)

Altdorfer's scene of incest is an early example of a long tradition with very similar and surprising meaning

Altdorfer’s Lot and His Daughters (1537)

Remember a few general principles and you will find that the art of understanding art is much easier than you might magine

Andrea Del Sarto’s Madonna in Gloria (1530)

An artist's identification with God was as common in the 20th century as in the Renaissance

Barlach’s The First Day (1922)

Learn how contemporary artists open insights into past art

Basquiat’s Untitled (Call Girl) (1983)

See how Giovanni Bellini used a visual pun to pass on his meaning

Bellini’s Madonna of the Pear (c.1485)

What to look for in a portrait beyond likeness

Bol’s Portrait of a Man Holding a White Plume (1648)

Look for art with graphic simplicity to help improve your skills

Bonnard’s Salon des Cent (1896)

How to find the art in Botticelli

Botticelli’s Virgin and Child with Saints…(1484-5)

Unless you knew that there might be a self-portrait in this Reclining Nude, you'd probably never see it.

Boucher’s Reclining Nude (1730’s)

"Mistakes" in representing reality are cues to the scene's underlying meaning

Caravaggio’s Martyrdom of St. Ursula (1609-10)

Learn how additions to a painting's narrative often provide access to the composition's underlying meaning

Caravaggio’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt (c.1597)

Find out how the colloquial term for a female rider inspired an artist

Courbet’s Woman in a Riding Habit or The Amazon (1856)

See how Durer shaped the Virgin and Child into the form of his own monogram

Dürer’s Virgin and Child (c.1491)

If you can't make a sense of an image beyond what it appears to be, keep looking until you can. Come back to it, time and again, until you do.

Degas’ At the Races in the Countryside (1869)

See how Degas subtly changed his copies after the Old Masters to fit his own (and art's) agenda

Degas’ Copy after Holbein’s Anne of Cleves (c.1860)

See how the meaning behind this image changes our entire understanding of Degas' oeuvre

Degas’ Woman Drying Her Foot (1885-6)

Narrative paintings are meant to make sense. Take note of anything odd.

Ghirlandaio’s Birth of St John the Baptist (1486-90)

Even at 17, Giacometti understood the hidden meaning of art

Giacometti’s Self-portrait with Brush (1918)

If you think like the artist and think inwards, all changes...

Goltzius’ Man Wearing a Tasseled Cap (1587)

With Mercury outfitted as a painter, the viewer can interpret this image confident that the subject is art

Goltzius’ Mercury (1611-13)

Think about who you are if, for instance, you are not yourself

Goltzius’ Portrait of Jan Govertsz van der Aar as St. Luke (1614)

How tradition in art is more often based on forms than subject matter

Goltzius’ Sleeping Danae… (1603)

What contemporary artists like Jasper Johns does is what great artists have always done. Those that do not will not last. A century from now they will be forgotten by all but historians.

Jasper Johns’ Fool’s House (1964)

The universal features of Frida Kahlo's art are what links her to the canon, not the details of her private life

Kahlo’s The Wounded Deer (1946)

History and the politics of the moment never trumps self-knowledge and self-reference as the 'sine qua non' of art

Kollwitz’s “Down with Abortion Clause” Poster (1924)

The most crucial piece of information about the Mona Lisa missing from standard textbooks is that the proportions of the Mona Lisa’s face differ from an earlier version seen in X-rays but are similar to the artist’s own in a well-known self-portrait.

Leonardo’s Mona Lisa (c. 1503-7)

How even Pop Art is not what it seems

Lichtenstein’s Alka-Seltzer (1966)

Is this one coat of paint or two?

Lichtenstein’s Man with Coat (1961)

The magic of Roy Lichtenstein's meaning

Lichtenstein’s Whaam! (1963)

A famous but much maligned painting has more poetry in it than its critics think

Lord Leighton’s Flaming June (1895)

Find out how the viewer in this garden scene is really inside Manet's mind

Manet’s Monet Family in the Garden (1874)

How a prostitute becomes an artist

Manet’s Nana (1877)

Find out how Manet turned Rembrandt into the African maid

Manet’s Olympia (1863) Part 2

How Manet identified with Olympia from the beginning

Manet’s Olympia Study (1862-63)

Joseph, worth only a cameo appearance in the Bible, is a major star in visual art. Cast as a narcoleptic, he falls asleep in one image after another without any art historian, to my knowledge, pausing to ask: Why does he sleep so much?

Mantegna’s Adoration of the Shepherds (c.1450-51)

Why draw an abstract contour when you can draw a meaningful one?

Matisse’s La Coiffure (1901)

Why did Picasso choose this painting for himself? What did he see in it?

Matisse’s Marguerite (1906-7)

There is yet more meaning in the drawing as we see in Part 2 of this analysis

Michelangelo’s Archers Shooting at a Herm (c.1530) Part 2

There's probably more unseen in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel than has ever been known....

Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling: Jeremiah (c.1509-10)

See why Jonah is the most important figure in the chapel

Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling: Jonah (1512)

Michelangelo's first great masterpiece is widely misunderstood. Like art in general, it is an expression of the creative moment.

Michelangelo’s Vatican Pieta (1498-99)

Discover how you can unlock layers of meaning from a relatively simple composition

Millet’s The Angelus (1857-9) and other works

One way to make sense of Miró's abstractions is to remember, as ever, that 'every painter paints himself.'

Miró‘s Drawing-Collage (1933)

If a self-portrait was collected by Picasso as this one was, there must be a reason beyond remembrance. It's our job to find out what.

Miró‘s Self-portrait (1919)

How a much-maligned artist knows far more than his critics

Mueck’s A Girl (2006)

Even contemporary artists follow the masters….

Nares’ Road Paint (2013)

Many were scandalized by this painting in the 1990's yet still missed the "real" scandal!

Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary (1996)

Peale’s The Artist in His Museum (1822)

Two protagonists in one painting must both represent the artist. It's a given in art so it's your job to find out how.

Picasso’s Cat Catching a Bird (1939)

Don't forget negative spaces....they too can hold content.

Picasso’s Head of a Woman (1960)

Not a particularly successful picture but an excellent learning tool

Picasso’s Portrait of Jacqueline (1965)

Find out how even Picasso's style has meaning

Picasso’s Ps and Massacre in Korea (1951)

Just like Michelangelo's, Picasso's women are masculine too....here's how and why.

Picasso’s Woman in an Armchair (1948)

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