Penile Papers

posted by Emily Gosling May 21, 2021

Back in 2017, artist Dominic Myatt published (no kissing), a book of around 30 drawings that illustrate “men seeking men” (m4m) ads on London’s Craigslist listings. Faithfully copying the typos, miss-spellings and posts that range from the vaguely NSFW to the truly WTF (like the man looking for a farmer to “own” him as if he were a pig, stating that their “meat would be tasty”) his drawings were beautifully sensitive, Egon Schiele-esque, rather than sensationalising the already-sensational.

It was through (no kissing) that I first heard about Myatt’s work, and soon after we’d spoken about the publication he asked if I’d like to draw a dick. Naturally, I did, and my shonky depiction of a Hen Do penis straw was sent off. I’d almost forgotten about the project until Myatt was in touch again recently, explaining that finally that dick—and so, so many far more impressive ones—had finally been immortalised in a cock compendium of sorts titled Penile Papers.

Like (no kissing), the book is published by Japan’s MNK Press in a limited-edition run of 200 copies. All profits from Penile Papers will be spilt equally between HIV charity the Terrence Higgins Trust and independent race equality think tank the Runnymede Trust.

There are a total of 62 penises within, drawn by a range of contributors including Vivienne Westwood, Beth Ditto, Mica Levi, Caroline Flack, Nick Knight, Andreas Kronthaler, Andrew Huang, Giles Deacon and many more. “I wanted to try and make it quite varied and diverse and while there is a number of artists and designers included, there is also people from outside that world such as my friend’s Grandma, customers from a sex club I used to work at, a call centre operator, a debt management consultant and a pub landlady to name a few,” the artist explains. “I wanted it to be less of a who’s who of the fashion and art world and more a cross section of society.”

Each contributor was asked simply to contribute a hand-drawn image of a penis, and within the book these are showcased alongside snippets of text taken from brief questions the artists asked the dick-drawers. Myatt, ever showing his knack for a wry, dry wit, also chose to include some of the rejection emails he received in response to his original requests for drawings. “I wanted to draw attention to the humble but ubiquitous phallic scribble that we’ve all either done or seen scrawled in the backs of books, walls, doors, cubicles and elsewhere,” says the artist, explaining his motivation for making the book. “I was mostly interested in recording how different people would respond to the request for a drawing, and what their drawing of a penis would look like…which you can see by flicking through this book is anything but uniform. Some address the sexual nature of a penis through the drawing and others just abstract the shape and are quite playful with it. The sheer variety of them all really struck me.

“I simply asked everyone for a drawing of a penis, and said that it could be as lewd, crude or as detailed as they wished. I didn’t want to lead them too much but I think I was successful in that there was a very varied response. Matty Bovan’s for instance was drawn with fabric and one that sadly didn’t make the final edit was a photograph of two dough balls and an Italian sausage.”

While, as mentioned, Myatt started working on the book in 2017, a few setbacks along the way meant that it’s only seen the light of day this year. These setbacks were mainly funding-related, but also account for the time it takes to corral a huge group of people into actually doing a drawing and sending it over. The explicit nature of the book—and the fact the profits were to be split between two charities—also presented a challenge when it came to finding a publisher.

“We had to change and pare back the design slightly and change some of the materials to be able to make something that was affordable to print and also purchase,” Myatt explains. “I think the most rewarding part of the printing and publishing process is actually holding the final object in your hand and seeing it all make sense physically after looking at it for so long via PDFs and InDesign files.”

The artist worked with creative director Christopher Colville-Walker on the design. The pair decided to print the book to the average dimensions of a penis “so that when it is rolled up in your hand you’d have this little temporary sculptural phallus that sort of tied everything together,” Myatt explains. “Even unrolled its weight and size feel akin to a smartphone or device—one of the main channels for many people’s sexuality, especially over the past year.

“It’s a bit of a nod to the phenomenon of the unsolicited (or solicited) dick pic too but also makes a mockery of it at the same time. I think there is something about the almost flip book like quality of the book that alludes to the deluge of personal sexual images many of us are confronted with via our smartphones—or also the way we make our way through dating apps in a flip book-like way.”

That idea of sexuality as expressed through the digital ether ties Penile Papers thematically to its predecessor, (no kissing), but where the Craigslist-based drawings delineate strictly defined roles and online anonymity, Penile Papers presents a sense of togetherness. “This book plays with the idea of physical intimacy but opens it up to a diverse range of people, personalities, and mark-making and is anything but anonymous,” says Myatt. “Depending on the success of this first edition I’d love to be able to serialise it maybe biannually, with different contributors each time.”