For 45 days the phallus had gone unnoticed. But then Giorgos Karatzaferis visited Outlook, Greece's biggest ever contemporary art exhibition. The far-right politician had a discerning eye: he stood in front of Belgian artist Thierry de Cordier's Asperges Me (Dry Sin), and saw red.
"It was," he said, "the most obscene, immoral, shameless painting I had ever seen."
On the right of the canvas was a cross, propped against a wall; on the left a fully erect penis. Upon closer observation Karatzaferis could see that semen was dripping from the crucifix. Even worse, "the penis, that thing, looked circumcised," railed the leader of the ultra-conservative Peoples' party.
Incensed, Karatzaferis headed straight for the offices of Supreme Court Prosecutor Dimitris Linos, who duly launched an inquiry into whether the work's public presentation constituted a crime.
He needn't have. Within hours the offending piece had been withdrawn. The painting, on display since Oct. 24, had "insulted religious sentiment."
`Wanking arm'
Sarah Lucas' gargantuan Wanking Arm might have pride of place at the 2.3 million euros (US$2.82 million) event. But after "weighing all the facts," Athens' culture minister announced that Asperges Me would be removed.
Almost unanimously, Greece's political and ecclesiastical elite felt moved to agree.
"Vulgarity does not produce culture," a spokesman for the main opposition center-right party snapped.
"It's an insult to our morals and customs and our religion," said Epiphanios Economou of the Greek Orthodox Church.
Miltiades Evert, the main opposition's former leader, went further: "If this picture is not withdrawn I will personally take it down with my own hands."
Outlook was meant to be the crowning event of the cultural Olympiad, a multi-million dollar jamboree put on by the government ahead of next summer's Olympics.
"Beyond putting Athens on the international art scene, the aim was to allow Greeks to see some very significant art, up close, for the very first time," the show's curator, Christos Joachimides, said.
But the fuss over Asperges Me was, it seems, just the beginning. The controversy had barely died down, before it was overtaken by acts of vandalism.
Vandalism
A young woman stormed into the exhibit early on Thursday and made straight for a photograph of a naked man copulating with a watermelon. Before security guards could stop her, she had slashed the work.
Later that day another woman -- also dressed in Orthodox-mandated black -- tried to deface a sketch of a full frontal nude by the American artist Raymond Pettibon.
"She charged in like a comet, screaming `it's obscene,'" a security officer said.
Ever since, the exhibit's organizers have been deluged by threats against the artworks and the "people who put them there."
"The threats have been very serious, our telephones have not stopped ringing," Joachimides said. "I can't believe it, Greece is in the EU, this is the 21st century," he sighed.
On Saturday, the exhibits were being protected by armed guards following yet more threats to "take down the penises."
Classical masterpieces
What would the ancients say? After all, the capital's museums were brimming with bare-chested Aphrodites and priapic Adonises.
"Should such works be banned?" asked the liberal daily Eleftherotypia, splashing some of the classical masterpieces across its front page. "These reactions, by both the church and politicians, have brought back dark memories."
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