I hear the scientists screaming, and the politicians faffing like nobody's business.
7 inches becomes a salacious reference to a male attribute. There was some 'intellectual' pondering about relative size in painting and sculpture. It smacked of puerility and sidestepped the primary issue, the exposure in the first place. It may just be a case of the physical presence of external organs. The female body is 'gendered' by breasts and maybe curves. A man is connoted by his genitals. This point may seem trivial, specious, spurious, but just read Stenberg about the doctrinal necessity of display in the Christ child.
The theoreticians 'read into' rather than just read. There is an inevitability about that, and the flip-side of it is that a truly 'objective' analysis is impossible. It is rather like Einstein's grasp of the fact that time changes with the observer. The relativity of critical investigation is a case of not being able to see the wood for the trees.
The inclusion of a pair of boxers alludes to a gay sensibility, but also to the commercialisation and commodification of everything. We are used to the fragment, to the flicker of the mega-visual tradition. We are bombarded by images. One survey suggests we see up to a thousand brand names every day, even if the awareness is passive and subliminal (clothes labels, car logos, food packaging). so, art's insistence that things be contemplated slows the process and expects a degree of rejection.
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