"Not just anyone makes a good pisser."--Jean-Claude Lebensztejn

Jean-Claude Lebensztejn's history of the urinating figure in art, Pissing Figures 1280-2014, is at once a scholarly inquiry into an important visual motif, and a ribald statement on transgression and limits in works of art in general. Lebensztejn is one of France's best-kept secrets. A world-class art historian who has lectured and taught at major universities in the United States, his work has remained almost entirely in French, his American audience limited to a small but dedicated group of cognoscenti.

First introducing the Manneken Pis--the iconic little boy whose stream of urine supplies water to this famous fountain and is also the logo for a Belgian beer company--the author takes the reader through a semi-scatological maze of cultural history. The earliest example is a fresco scene located directly above Cimabue's "Crucifixion" from around 1280 at the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, in which Lebensztejn's careful eye locates an angel behind a pillar urinating through a hole in his garment. He continues to navigate expertly through cultural twists and turns, stopping to discuss Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1968 film Teorema, for example, and Marlene Dumas's 1996-97 homage to Rembrandt's pissing woman. At every moment, Lebensztejn's prose is lively, his thinking dynamic, and his subject matter entertaining.