Tag Archives: art

An Art History of Erotic Peeing

Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) was a British sexologist: impotent until age 60, when, much to his surprise, he found that he could become aroused by the sight of a woman urinating! The term for sexual arousal related to urination is urolagnia. Urolagnia encompasses both thoughts and acts, and may involve watching someone pee, peeing on someone, or being peed upon by someone else. Urolagnia may also involve urophagia, the drinking of urine—one’s own or otherwise.

The following is a selection of images from the shelves of Western art that depict peeing in an erotic context. I have tried my best to identify the artist and image and give at least a rough estimate of the date. Much of the information comes from Taschen’s massive Erotica Universalis, though I’ve also made use of Google’s book and Scholar searches. The images are, as much as possible, in chronological order:

?, Erotic Mosaic in Timgad, (ca. 100 A.D.)

?, carving from Cloister of Champeau (15th c.)

Bernard Picart, "Two Fountains" (16th c.)

?, "The Pisspot" (16th c.)

?, "The Pisspot" (17th c.)

Rembrandt, ? (17th c.)

Rembrandt, "Woman Pissing" (1631)

?, from "The Academy of Ladies" (1680)

Francois Boucher, "La toilette intime" (1741)

Jean-Francois Garneray, "La toilette intime" (18th c.)

?, from Dutch edition of De Sade's "Juliette" (1798)


Chauvet, from "Memoirs of Casanova" (19th c.)


Deveria, from "Diabolico Foutro Manie" (19th c.)

Eugene le Poitevin, from "Erotic Deviltries" (1832)

Peter Fendi, ? (1835)

?, "The Sovereign's Entrance, Germany" (ca. 1900)

?, ? (?)

?, ? (?)

?, ? (?)

Mario Tauzin, ? (ca. 1930)

Picasso, "Pissing Woman" (1965)


Nameless Ring in the Wood

Gustave Courbet, "Landscape with a Dead Horse"

The cracks and muted overcast-Fall greens, their forest turning black into the background like an open maw about to consume the dead white horse. This Courbet, which hangs in the Hermitage, is at once murky and clear in its anticipation and exhibition of death. The horse, contrary to the title, is dying; it’s not yet dead. If it was, it would be gone, and dark, and eaten by the trees. If the painting is itself unexceptional (as some say), I find it intensely emotional.

The animal’s light spills onto the ground around it, physically spilling life into the Earth. The tall tree on the left, rising above the frame, is a link to the spiritual realm. The tension is in the space between the horse and the tree: if enough lightness seeps into the ground that the space-between becomes light and the lightness touches the tree trunk, then the horse’s spirit will survive.

Look closely and see a human behind the horse. He, afraid of dying, retreats into death rather than witness the struggle of life. What do people know of nature? What is their connection with it? Retreat, dearest coward, and never become like the horse.

The most famous Norwegian literary figure in the rest of the world is Knut Hamsun: for his books (Hunger), his politics (he eulogized Hitler as “a prophet of the gospel of justice for all nations”), and his talent (available in translation). Until this evening, I could name no other. Now I can name also Tarjei Vesaas, who, Wikipedia tells me, “is widely considered to be one of Norway’s greatest writers of the twentieth century and perhaps its most important since World War II.” I have not read any of his novels. Below is his poem, “A Nameless Ring in the Wood”, translated into English by Roger Greenwald:

You asked before it happened:
where is my tree among trees?
No one answered.
There was no time for more questions.
The clock chimed.
Suddenly things happened to you
when you were unprepared.

Strong juice welled up in force
under the bark’s rough skin.
A bird keeps watch
and everything’s in its place.

You are a part of this,
which you knew
even as you lived shut off from it—
with your dream,
with your quiet, thirsting aspect of loss—
where your roots were, and are, and remain.

Then it’s time. The past is forgotten:
For you grow light-handed, without warning
—you, who had such a firm grip.
You succeed. Your wish is fulfilled.
Succeed, succeed.
Everything you touch
takes form and succeeds, for two seconds.
No one sees it. No one understands
that this is the last thing
until it’s happened.
No one understands it then, either.

Now it’s over.
But the tree was yours.
Life takes its course under the bark.
You with your young sap become this ring,
which hardens into wood and plays its role.
Your young dying year becomes a ring in the wood.
When the tree grows tall and broad against the sky
and sweeps through the midnight with its strength,
then you are one among many in the wood.
Your ring is yours and lives your lives.

The poem could be about a horse. I think it is about a boy. This boy felt a connection with nature, or else did not and deeply yearned for one. He wanted a tree for himself. But he fell ill, when he was unprepared. Before his death, he felt a connection with a tree—one among many, his tree. For a time, this connection made him live as he wanted: connected: successfully. No one else saw what the boy felt. The boy died. He became and is a ring in the tree. The ring lives the lives the boy did not. The boy’s lightness reached the tall trunk of the tree stretching beyond the frame; the boy is the horse painted by Courbet.

Tarjei Vesaas był jednym z najsłynniejszych norweskich pisarzy. Pisał powieści, sztuki i wiersze. Na podstawie wersji angielskiej, przetłumaczyłem jeden z jego utworów na polski. Nadam mu tytuł: “Bezimienny pierścień w lesie”.

Zapytałaś zanim się stało:
gdzie jest moje drzewo wśród drzew?
Nikt nie odpowiedział.
Nie było czasu na więcej pytań.
Zegar zabił.
Nagle rzeczy się Tobie stały,
kiedyż byłaś nieprzygotowana.

Silne soki mocno się zebrały
pod szorstką skórą kory.
Ptak pilnuje
i wszystko jest na swoim miejscu.

Jesteś tego częścią,
czego znałaś
nawet kiedy żyłaś od tego zamknięta—
ze swoim snem,
ze swoim milczącym, spragnionym aspektem utraty—
gdzie były twoje korzenie, i są, i pozostają.

Więc czas. Przeszłość jest zapomniana:
Bo stajesz się lekko-ściskająca, bez ostrzeżenia
—ty, która zaciskała tak mocno.
Odnosisz sukces. Twoje marzenie jest spełnione.
Odnosisz sukces, sukces.
Wszytko co dotykasz
przybiera kształt i odnosi sukces, na dwie sekundy.
Nikt tego nie widzi. Nikt nie rozumie
że ta rzecz jest ostatnią
dopóki się nie stała.
Też nikt wtedy nie rozumie.

Teraz jest zakończone.
Ale to drzewo było twoje.
Życie zaczyna kursować pod korą.
Ty ze swoją młodą żywicą stajesz się tym pierścieniem,
zastygającym w drewno i odgrywającym rolę.
Twój młody umierający rok się staje pierścieniem w drewnie.
Gdy drzewo urośnie szerokie i wysokie na niebowym tle,
i swą siłą się przetoczy przez północ,
wtedy w lesie jesteś jedną wśród wielu.
Twój pierścień jest twój i żyje twoje życia.

Pasuje mi do “Pejzażu z martwym koniem” Gustava Courbeta, lecz myślę, że koń jest nim, a wierszu raczej zmieniłem płeć, by był dla M.

Tarjei Vesaas

L’Origine du monde

Gustave Courbet, "The Origin of the World" (1866)

Richard Alfred Milliken (1767- 1815) was an Irish lawyer, poet and playwright whose best-remembered work is “The Groves of Blarney”, pastiche of supposedly dreadful “Castle Hyde” by some or other traveling Irish bard. Its dark holes and pusses, breeding and mossy entrances, sweet fishy feather beds, and mud foll-oh-OH-OOH!-ed by flood obviously anticipates Courbet’s realist cunt:


For ’tis there’s a cave where no daylight enters,
__But cats and badgers are forever bred;
Being mossed by natur’, that makes it sweeter
__Than a coach and six, or a feather bed.
’Tis there the lake that is stored with perches,
__And comely eels in the verdant mud;
Beside the leeches, and groves of beeches,
__All standing in order for to guard the flood.


Milliken also wrote “The River-Side: A Poem in Three Books“, which, though slightly tedious to this one’s eyes, does have its loftier heights. Nature descriptions are a constant pleasure (but too much for a dirty mind!) and then there’s this call for peace and restraint:


In ancient times, when hot religious zeal,
Drew many a knight to Palestine’s domains,
To honor God by shedding pagan blood.
(More honour’d far who is the prince of peace
By deeds of mercy and restraint of war.
Philanthropy for all the sons of earth
And brotherly affection.) When the flame
Romantic caught from breast to breast, through all
United Christendom, her prowest knights
Assembled to redeem the holy land


Funny that in 1807 (or so), the Crusades were “ancient”, though it does lend them an air of legend. Funny also that the word honour is first spelt honor (no u), then honour in the next line. Still, it’s the thought that counts; and here the thought is the nobility and grace of peace amongst all. Who would have thought? A post that began with a giant vagina, ends with a call for global harmony.

Poitevin’s Cocks & Devils

As an age, we harbour secretly prideful feelings about our relationship with sex. We believe ourselves to be the most open, the most creative, the least censuring and prudish, and the most tolerant society in history. Deep down, we also smile at the thought that we are the most depraved, perverse and immoral. We are sure our ideas are the most progressive and weird, and our art the best and most shocking representation of this weirdness!

The following is a series of drawings by French artist Eugène le Poitevin (1806-1870) made in the mid-19th century.

The motif in these pictures is the Devil. Here, for example, this devil is having his way with a stockinged lady in the sky. I wonder how difficult it would be to have sex and flap one’s wings at the same time. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee?

So, we have a fire, over which a happy-looking devil is fucking a woman clinging to him while, from behind, another devil fingers the woman’s ass. A second woman blows (no, not that kind of blowing!) on the fire with some kind of instrument. She’s clothed and focused on her task.

This particularly ugly-looking devil is ejaculating a stream of women and couples and other wonders that, once they hit the ground, are pulled away by smaller devils for, we can only guess, unholy and dirty deeds don’t dirt cheap.

These six ladies have stumbled upon quite the find: a tall pole on top of which dangle (and grow?) various cocks. Hungrily, they climb the pole, grab a cock, knock down a few more, and God knows what happens then!

This is a true feat of sexual engineering. A lady, stockings pulled down to her knees, lies on her back, legs spread, a dildo (or perhaps some kind of living cock-creature) in her pussy. Her head is up and she’s looking at the devils and skeleton things that are pulling back a thick wooden battering ram. Another pushes against her from behind, to make sure she stays in place when the ram…

A simple roll in the grass with a devil. Four legs and a tail.

A humanoid cock relaxes by the fire after a hard day’s work. Nothing like kicking back in your favourite chair and reading the paper.

This devil is on his back, receiving a nice handjob from the miss squatting over him. Unless my eyes deceive me, she is defecating into his open mouth. I suppose he likes it, because his hands are pulling at the mattress like he’s hanging on for dear life. You dirty devil, you!

An already tall devil walks on a pair of stilts and dangles a woman on his tail (curled up under his legs), ready to set her down on his erect cock. He’s quite the horny creature. I mean, just look at his head.

Cock worship in its finest and most organized form: a crowd of women standing about, a few bowing down and possibly praying, and several hugging and pressing against the cock itself. Living or statue? Your guess is as good as mine.

A devil kneels in front of a wooden box and two women eagerly view his enlarged penis through some kind of magnifying lens. Beside them, a she-devil watches and guards a basketful of penises.

There’s nothing quite as romantic as a 19th-century courtship. Here, two finely dressed cocks woo two finely dressed ladies. I’m sure their intentions are pure.

Surreal. A woman lies in the water, tight-clothed and open-legged and hard-nippled, her face underwater, being attended to by a giant cock. On a small cliff,  a line of devils waits their turn to dive head-first into the woman’s vagina. In the foreground, some aquatic penises dive and spit.

A cock with a rifle, shooting at two flying pussies. It looks like he’s hit one. His pet cock-dog is ready to retrieve the pray. Speaking of prey: pray tell, what one can do with a hunted pussy? Is there a season, a bag limit?

I was taught not to blow my own horn. I guess I should have been taught how to blow it properly, musically. This devil seems to have the hang of it, reading music held up by a skeleton creature and having his own tail blown by a monkey (?) sitting on a skull.

This handsome devil sure has his eye (and not only) on the prize. What a rump. I think she knows what he’s looking at, don’t you?

I believe this is a big devil on his back in the water reading a book while using his cock as a mast to make himself into a kind of sailboat. There she blows! The mind sure must feel nice. As a breeze, of course.

Happy cock time.

More cock worshiping. This time, a lone woman kneels before the alter of Cock. All of these pictures have an air of anti-clericalism to them, but this one more than most. In that world, would a lesbian be the same thing as an atheist?

The woman lives on a cock farm. Every morning, she wakes up early and feeds the cocks, which are always ready to greet her. Some cocks are interested in her seeds; others are more interested in whatever’s under that dress. What that is, I dare not say. Hint: it’s not a turtle.

This Turkish-looking or otherwise Eastern devil is tall but still has a proportionally-enlarged member. Something tells me the little guy carrying his tail has an easier job than the two women at the front. Whatever pays the bills.

Cocks are generally limp and docile creatures. However, when they become startled or aroused, they may become aggressive and dangerous. A charging cock is to be feared. As such, they are not fit for petting zoos.

Cock fighting is the obvious description. What about: two dicks boxing? The one on the left seems more dignified than the one on the right (is headbutting allowed?); yet the one on the right is also holding a newspaper. As the Beatles sang: “very strange”. Makes a prescient caricature of MMA, though, doesn’t it?

“Buy a cock, any cock,” said the dark mistress, sweeping her hand across the devil’s fine selection of merchandise. “All shapes and sizes, colours and ethnicities. And if you want something else, we’ve got more in the basket.”

Damned if I know what’s going on here.

This one needs little description. It’s obviously two women playing net-less tennis with two rackets and a cock while a big-dicked devil fellates himself on a small hill in the background. He’s also the chair umpire. One of the ladies is playing left-handed. She’s obviously a fan of Rafa Nadal.

Sometimes it feels like you’ve got the weight of the whole world on your shoulders. At other times, it feels like you’re carrying a giant penis on your back. Two metaphors, one state of being.