In His Own Image Poem by gershon hepner

Artists must exaggerate
in order to create their art;
breasts and buttocks must be great,
and phalluses right off the chart.
When God the Artist made First Man
in His own image it is clear
the point of this artistic plan
was not to imitate His rear,
or face, or breasts or even phallus,
or parts of these divine physique
seen only by those in the palace
where He claims to be unique,
but to produce a being which
exaggerated every fault
of God Himself. He viewed as kitsch
those images made of basalt
or granite, and preferred to use
the flesh, blood, bones and hair and skin
to make the images of Jews
and gentiles, all who love to sin
just as He does in His own way.
When naughty, we all imitate
the Artist, God, whose man of clay
has faults to which He can relate.


In an article in the June 27 issue of the LA Times Christopher Knight reviews a new series on art on Public Television, directed by Nigel Spivey:

The reason for artistic distortion from the actual human bodily norm remains the same throughout history, Nigel Spivey says. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about the enormous breasts and buttocks of a 25,000-year-old carved stone fetish figurine, like the tiny Venus of Willendorf, or a bluntly primitivist carving by Henry Moore, which looks Mesoamerican; or even an impossibly sleek nose job on a 25-year-ol fashion model. In every case, the human brain is simply hard-wired to want to exaggerate, alter and otherwise misquote the human form. And there's nothing to be done about it. The show's theme is less art than brain chemistry-'How Dopamine Made the World, ' as it were.

6/26/06