On my last tour through Viennese art galleries, I stumbled across a very interesting show by an American lady painter. She painted the displayed work in early 70’s, while being together (and very much in love) with a German painter. The colorful, psychedelic, naïve paintings all showed the couple with their genitals very obviously accentuated. Definitely not something you would hang in your living room if you had kids. This was the first time that I’ve seen in visual arts a woman admitting, though subconsciously, her obsession with her man’s penis. I’ve seen it in literature; in a book called “Vibrator” by the Japanese author Mari Akasaka (I can highly recommend the book). But both times, the she-artists tried to hide the fact that it is all about a penis-trap: the painter presented it as love, the writer described it as a  rescue from an eating disorder. It is interesting how women, even today’s mega emancipated alfa-girls, cannot admit being caught in a penis-trap. Men never had a problem admitting, sometimes even proudly, of having been caught in a pussy-trap. Ladies will always try to persuade themselves, and the world, that it is all about love, love, love.

Anyway, I was standing in front of one of those fun paintings admiring what the artist admired, when a lady approached me in hope for some highly intellectual art-meets-psychotherapy conversation “What do you thing was going through her head?” she asked.

“LSD and a big penis.” I replied. Come on, let’s get honest.