A Superbad Exhibit at the Met

A giant phallus being carried through Roman streets in a celebratory parade is not what comes to mind when thinking about the sketches of great renaissance artists. However, the Metropolitan Museum’s exhibit ‘Art and Love in Renaissance Italy,’ and its art object "The Triumph of the Phallus,” focuses on art that would have been used, cherished, laughed at, and generally enjoyed. The objects call to mind contemporary images from film and television. They are not only examples of superior craftsmanship and artistry, but of the representations of sex and love in Renaissance Italy.

Many institutions and individuals distinguish between ‘high art’ and ‘low art.’ So-called low art encompasses items made from mediums of artistic potential, but with the primary intention to entertain or titillate the masses. While some creations of popular art are dumb-ed down to appeal to the lowest common denominator of the populace (aka its audience), they can also be so in tune with human nature that their popularity comes from their ability to speak to everyone. It is odd, then, that popular art, and its position within society, is often ignored in our museums until centuries after its manufacture. ‘Art and Love in Renaissance Italy’ highlights many objects that are valued as high art, even though their contemporary counterparts are not.

While exploring the galleries dedicated to physical love, it is hard not to think of similarities between the subject matter, and at times even the composition of the Renaissance images, and contemporary renderings of physical love. One can, of course, argue for the skill of the Renaissance artist tools in hand. However, it is also undeniable that these images are of the same intention as the penis drawings made by Superbad’s young Evan. The glorifying image he draws of a group of phallus’s raising the flag at Iwo Jima is not far off from the literal depiction of a Phallus’s Parade hung reverently on the Metropolitan Museum’s wall. The same humor and exuberance is in and escapes both.

Through exploring he past, there are ways to evaluate present trends as not new, but part of a recurring, or constant, humanity. A humanity expressed through all art; functional, entertaining, and always enlightening.




http://www.metmuseum.org/special/art_love/view_1.asp?item=23