The ear and his shagger.

Logo-theoretical constrains in western cultural iconology.

Between the freshly established solar lamps and the birthday of a magazine, recently discussed for his scholarship donor for punk daughters and models of an age of limits, also just before the opening of the ARTS-On.com Members_only area there is really only one issue : Bunny Sex.

this animal was in the history of Western art clearly enough such well known as "randy", that - unlike almost all the other animals it was not allowed to serve as a vanitas symbol. Nevertheless, we find him in the realistic studies of Dürer – radiant in his self-worth like Giotto's donkey - and in a few Christian scenes, so in Francesco del Cossa and Titian.

But Titian stages the unusual attribute-animal in the context of a Marie scene, which uses precisely the slightly raked image of the white bunny for its use of narrative elements. While Joseph in the background snuggles with a dog, Marie holds the bunny with her left hand, while the child is moved from a maid in her right hand and the child with his eyes fixes on the lovely pet. The rather aristocratic-homely garden scene then, and the slightly critical look of Joseph, but for the viewer a clearly decent handling of the holy mother has also an appropriately ambiguous, secular connotation – she is wrongly suspected then, but although Marie, not beyond suspicion.

The Shagger of modernity drove it obviously far worse. Almost as a revenge campaign against the exclusion from the vanity-art of earlier centuries, he served as the representative, almost serial, schematic form for the vanity Notorious, defining the vocabulary of a through narrowness and selection of the new metropolitan sparked sexuality.

The rabbit was helped by another symbol, dramatically set into scene by the mastermind and the Early Modern: The ear, as a separate part of the body and a vaginalized symbol. Van Gogh wanted to be rid of it, Kafka darkly lionized about an accidental encounter with such an anonymous thing while leaving the tram. Diese eher barocke Variante sieht sich im Hasenohr quasi phallically streched, but therefore not less suggestive. Thus the rabbit entered modernism not as naturally holistic migrant animal, but reduced to its friendly toppled-streched long runners: the arms of the Demoiselle d'Avignon appear as inconspicuous attempt to elongate the ears, but Andre Gill's rabbit in Le Lapin Agile, a cabaret of the previous century at Montmatre, jumping from the frying pan rabbit took the tradition of the place as a tavern of thieves (Au rendez-vous des voleurs) and serial killers (Cabaret of the Assassins).

In 1904 Picasso portrayed the daughter of the cabaret owner in a beautifully preraffaelitic and haunting work, „Woman with a crow“. The daughter is shown in a fairy-tale-like gesture kissing the black rook, the picture thus for english and german speakers highlighted with an allusion to „There's honour among thieves“, in german „Eine Krähe hackt der anderen kein Auge aus“. Anyway, it does not show a frivolous rabbit, but at least with a bird the freudian sexual symbol of surrealism, which became well known before Hitchcock, that is, already with the Surrealists. But if we remain at the Rabbit in the strict sense, it is also a find. Just as Picasso's Demoiselles in her arms tried to present the cheeky erection of the rabbit's ears, Max Ernst bended the mutilated fingers of his surrealistic hand to bunny-ear-like motifs.

As for the length of the rabbit ears, the association with the legs and vaginal -“kites“ (The rhombus with differing lines is called „kite“ or „dragon“ in german – a kind of unconscious symbol of the mathematical tradition's mental illness) sat down into both popular forms, including the motive that enticed our thoughts into the winter-time: Art Paul's Playboy logo. It is pretty, but a little boring, or at least, true to the fifties, extremely corset like corded up. Where the real rabbit's ears start to the head, the vaginal-kity rabbit-ears of Art Paul's align themselves nearly pointwise. But well, it has been done in the Fifties, in the same issue where the feminine waistline of Marilyn Monroe had been presented, in 1953. Although it fits, as studies show, well onto the ears of Dürer's famous hare, it really runs on too pointed.

The two "makers" of the Playboy logos of course rather refuse Art Historical origins:
Hugh Marston Hefner:

„"I was looking for a bunny because of the funny sexual connotations as a symbol for the magazine, and because he represents an image which is a little rude and looks playful at the same time.

I put him in a tuxedo to add a little sophistication. Another consideration also played a role..

Because as well 'The New Yorker’ as the ‚Esquire’

‚ use men in tuxes as symbols, I thought that a rabbit is something special; and the idea of a rabbit in a dinner jacket seemed charming, amusing and right to me."

Art Paul:

„„If I had known how important this little hare became, I would have probably redrawn him dozens of times to make him well enough, and I suppose at times that none of these versions would have become as good as the original. (both cited from Wikipedia)

As it was, I made only one drawing, and took just half an hour."“

(Wikipedia)

Thus, you could also, due to the brevity of the logo and the width of its angle - to put it in a very unerotic way – think of another form well known in the thirties and fifties the cognitive psychology was enthusiastic about in this time: In its schemas, the leg-like hare-head snaps easily around into the so-called "duck form."

However, we do not find a cognition-theoretically closed, elongated beak, but the duck form of another tradition, Christmas or even, more pornographic, of dinner, albeit severely weakened in the Playboy's logo. Rather strangely, that the duck also figures in the appointment of positions of sex. What is meant with „duck“, is something we would better call it (Christmas) goose. Because the ducks are flamboyant especially in their rather short legs, which, again according to the note saying "lies have short legs" – let the duck become, tied, unleashed or liberal, the (visual) epitome of a journalistic „canard“ (false report).