PISS ARTISTS

CALLE
DEMUTH
HAMMONS
HASEGAWA
MANNEKEN PIS
QUINN
SERRANO
SMITH
WARHOL

URINAL ARTISTS

DUCHAMP
KASAHARA
LEVINE
REDFORD

Psycho-analytic material, incomplete as it is and not susceptible to clear interpretation, nevertheless admits of a conjecture—a fantastic sounding one—about the origin of this human feat. It is as though primal man had the habit, when he came in contact with fire, of satisfying an infantile desire connected with it, by putting it out with a stream of urine. The legends that we possess leave no doubt about the originally phallic view taken of tongues of flame as they shoot upwards. Putting out fire by micturating—a theme to which modern giants, Gulliver in Lilliput and Rabelais's Gargantua, still hark back—was therefore a kind of sexual act with a male, and enjoyment of sexual potency in homosexual competition. The first person to renounce this desire and spare the fire was able to carry it off with him and subdue it to his own use. By damping down the fire of his own sexual excitation, he had tamed the natural force of fire. This great cultural conquest was thus the reward for his renunciation of instinct.

Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents