Circumcision in Art

Circumcision in art has already been mentioned in the topic “Baby Jesus in religious pictures”:

https://en.zity.biz/index.php?mx=forum;ox=display;topic=121475;firstnew;cell=566

I would like to mention another work called: The Turkish Bath, by Sylvia Sleigh (1916-2010), a masculine version of the Bain Turc, by Ingres.

I found this link among others (see picture 7/20):

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/portraiture-time-mad-men-180951151/

I read that we could recognize friends of the artist among the men represented. Did she ask them to pose or did she just ask them if they were circumcised? On the man standing on the right you can even clearly see the scar, although the color of the skin is the same.

Unrelated to circumcision, but I reckon Martin Veyron was asked why he drew some male character in his own likeness, and he answered that he would not be comfortable drawing some other man's dick.

Unrelated to circumcision, but I reckon Martin Veyron was asked why he drew some male character in his own likeness, and he answered that he would not be comfortable drawing some other man's dick.

@Pecan_nutjob I thought about another French comic book author: Gotlib (1934-2016). I had noticed that he always drew circumcised penises, one of the story in the book “Hamster Jovial” even mentions circumcision during a sex education class for scouts.

It was only much later that I made the connection with his Jewish origin.

Stanley Spencer

Double Nude Portrait: The Artist and his Second Wife (The leg of mutton nude)

https://www.wikiart.org/en/stanley-spencer/double-nude-portrait-the-artist-and-his-second-wife-the-leg-of-mutton-nude-1937

What's interesting is that Sylvia Sleigh was born in Wales and raised in England and her first husband was English, so presumably she was exposed to uncircumcised penises. What motivated the choice of drawing circumcised ones in the Turkish Bath? For her American husband, presumably because he indeed was circumcised. For the others… did she draw them from posing in the nude, or did she reason that since they were Americans they were probably cut too?

I think she asked them to pose naked, maybe just to take a few pictures. She certainly did not want ideal men, as opposed to Ingres and other painters always depicting ideal women.

I would like to mention another work called: The Turkish Bath, by Sylvia Sleigh (1916-2010), a masculine version of the Bain Turc, by Ingres.

I found this link among others (see picture 7/20):

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/portraiture-time-mad-men-180951151/

I read that we could recognize friends of the artist among the men represented. Did she ask them to pose or did she just ask them if they were circumcised? On the man standing on the right you can even clearly see the scar, although the color of the skin is the same.

I think she had them pose and then painted from a photo. My opinion is based on the very natural positioning of the penises of the two men who are seated or lounging on the right side of the canvas. It would have been very difficult to conceive of the positioning of their penises without an actual view.

@Woyzeck I have not read any of the Hamster Jovial comics. I'd be interested in knowing what allusions to circumcision Gotlib made there. I also don't recall his drawn penises (but, again, I've only read Rubrique à brac and Dingodossiers, which were family-oriented and did not contain anything risqué).

@Woyzeck I have not read any of the Hamster Jovial comics. I'd be interested in knowing what allusions to circumcision Gotlib made there. I also don't recall his drawn penises (but, again, I've only read Rubrique à brac and Dingodossiers, which were family-oriented and did not contain anything risqué).

@Pecan_nutjob Two examples from “Hamster Jovial” in the links below:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19cPvyblNOVfdym2WDMQyKau7Xxy5rhrH/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19coMuCV_JfN4EUQJRNvHE2eez-Zz5jCi/view?usp=sharing

@Woyzeck Indeed, he makes a direct allusion to it, in addition to drawing circumcised penises.

He may have been pissed at having been circumcised; as far as I know, he was a nonbeliever, and I've met men born in Jewish or Muslim families displeased to have been cut without choice.

He may have been pissed at having been circumcised; as far as I know, he was a nonbeliever, and I've met men born in Jewish or Muslim families displeased to have been cut without choice.

I found another story where young scouts are comparing the length of their penises and they are not circumcised. This could indicate that Gotlib was not in favor of ritual circumcision and would not have had his children circumcised (I don't know if he had any boys).

I'm not including the link because this image might violate Zity's rules.

We can find the same thing in a work that was already discussed in another subject:

Charles Ray

Family Romance

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1077kgW9Utw-aNW3kkA33-ksZPone0-GB/view?usp=share_link

@Woyzeck Difficult to know if Charles Ray was making a statement of his own preferences, or just noted that mores were changing and circumcision rates were decreasing.

Falk Gernegross, a German artist born in 1973.

Name of the work: Keule. It can be translated as « club » (weapon) but also as « chicken thigh ».

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x9RU4m5AJzQYiKzL0tAwn1EU3DzA7fCL/view?usp=sharing

@Woyzeck Interesting. It's not a culture where circumcision is commonplace. Perhaps he was cut due to phimosis, and he represents men in his liking?

@Woyzeck Interesting. It's not a culture where circumcision is commonplace. Perhaps he was cut due to phimosis, and he represents men in his liking?

@Pecan_nutjob Maybe the man is not circumcised, but has retracted his foreskin as an invitation to have sex with him, instead of an erection.

Or the artist didn't want to represent an ideal man, but rather one with imperfections, like his big thighs which give him an androgynous appearance. Was circumcision one of these imperfections?

You talk about the origin of the artist, I give another example from the same exhibition with an American man in the 1980s (Dix and the Present, Deichtorhallen Hamburg):

Han Goldin

Bobby masturbating, New York City

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-1uGzMDldd9iZI_oRKa0ZAa1rkjJxc6w/view?usp=sharing

Another photo of the Kunsthalle in Hamburg, I didn't note the name of the artist:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-6WjNpegZqm5lZxB4ABM2NnJ68SsJelv/view?usp=sharing

Stuart Stanford

https://almanaquefotografica.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/SS_040422_022.jpeg

Another work of Charles Ray : Shoe Tie

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ALHB1UbENIsUo3IGbyTbSMK5lLSZEOP5/view?usp=sharing

Michaelangelo's awsome statue "David" has a glaring error: The original David was a Jewish boy, who would have been circumcised at 8 days and the sculpture shows an intact foreskin. Possible M didn't have any Jewish models; maybe he never saw a circumcised penis.

Michaelangelo's awsome statue "David" has a glaring error: The original David was a Jewish boy, who would have been circumcised at 8 days and the sculpture shows an intact foreskin. Possible M didn't have any Jewish models; maybe he never saw a circumcised penis.

More likely would have been that M choose deliberately not to show a cut penis. This to avoid discussions/accusations about the whole Jewish practice at a time when tolerance was not high on the order of Christian consciences.

The statue was meant to be placed in a very prominent place and while a circumcised penis would have been historically correct, that subtlty would have been lost on an average person at the time. It was also artistic canon at the time that artists follow Greek/Roman artistic traditions in the arts and that certainly meant no circumcision depicted, as both Greeks and Romans abhorred the practice, considering it a mutilation of the body.

Nor would it have endeared him to church authorities either It was all good and well to celebrate the feast of the circumcision, but most Christians would not have thought of the dichotomy of celebrating the feast of the infant Jesus being cut, it would be another to show him in this state.

A nd by analogy the same artistic agreements were extended to other Jewish biblical figures.

It was sort of a 'don't mention the circumcision' thing but less funnier than when John Cleese had at it with the war.

Two new examples of circumcision in art:

Edward Munch, Bathers

https://en.zity.biz/gallery/image/283207

Martha Edelheit, View of Empire State Building from Sheep Meadow

https://en.zity.biz/gallery/image/283208

@Woyzeck Unsuprising for Edelheit (almost all white males circumcised at birth in the USA back then) but more for Munch, a Norwegian Christian. What was the custom in the bourgeoisie of his country back then?

@Woyzeck Unsuprising for Edelheit (almost all white males circumcised at birth in the USA back then) but more for Munch, a Norwegian Christian.

The Munch painting is kind of indistinct and certainly painted unrealistically. You can look at it any way you wish and conclude they either are or are not cut.

I've known this painting for a long time, from back when it was considered to be 'erotic' art and published in what were at the time, thought to be daring books on nudity. I just thought it to be unrealistic and non-representational art. Not really a good example of human anatomy.

@agracier In Edelheit’s painting the penises (especially the one on the left) are conspicuous so I wonder if it was her own erotic interest

There are several versions of this painting, on another one it is more difficult to see if the man is circumcised. On a painting of a young man, the model seems also be circumcised, but it could also mean that the foreskin is retracted to increase the erotism of the picture. I cannot find the same version as I have in a book.

Munch was perhaps circumcised due to medical reasons or for a tradition in his family and it could also be a "clin d'œil" for circumcised men.

He made photographic self-portraits at the beach of Warnemünde in 1907 when painting. If we can see his butt on a picture, his penis was covered on another one, not with a swimsuit, only with a towel. It indicates that it was probably a naturist beach. The model is nude, but his penis is not clearly visible.

I plan to visit an exposition in Milan next week. I will inform you if other nude paintings of men are exposed.

As an art lover and artist myself, a drawing, sculpture or painting of a circumcised penis is much more visually interesting than uncircumcised.

As an art lover and artist myself, a drawing, sculpture or painting of a circumcised penis is much more visually interesting than uncircumcised.

In debating art, I think that a circumcised penis on a sculpture or in a painting goes against about 2000 years of art history. On a public statue it would look totally out of place and would most likely cause even more controversy than any nudity.

I'm trying to think of ever seeing a circumcised male statue in public anywhere and cannot think of a single instance. Uncircumcised are so common as to be unremarkable.

This contribution in a blog compares the David of Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni with a man, but the penis of the model is circumcised and bigger:

https://artisus.canalblog.com/2024/10/david.html

Translation of the last phrase:

The gloomy spirits found a fault with this very handsome young man who posed for this reconstruction, that of not being incut! like his prestigious model...

This contribution in a blog compares the David of Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni with a man, but the penis of the model is circumcised and bigger:

The dark pubic area is more distasteful I would think. Realistic perhaps, but not very artistically appealing.

@bratwurst I recall reading somewhere that in antiquity, Jewish circumcision was limited to a slight shortening of the prepuce, but that this changed later to radical removal of the foreskin (something like preventing Jews from reneging on their faith). So it may have been historically accurate to show a partially covered glans. I however don't think Michaelangelo knew about such historical oddities.

@Jacana I used copilot: It says in ancient times "milah" was just removing the skin redundant past the end of the penis. So you're right'

Upon closer inspection of the part of the statue in question there isn't much extra skin.