Nellie Mae Rowe (1900–1982), Woman Scolding Her Companion, 1981
Pastel, colored pencil, crayon, marker, on cardboard, 29 1/4 x 32 in.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation
Rowe registers a humorous complaint about excessive male sexual demands in Woman Scolding Her Companion. The woman, Rowe herself, assumes a combative posture and turns away a peculiar creature that resembles a penis with a dog’s body. Other images adorn the drawing and enforce the central topic: between the two antagonists is a phallic staff with a smiling male face (virtually identical to dance wands used by the Yoruba of Nigeria in rituals honoring Shango the Thundergod); a fruit bowl–or fountain or birdbath–surmounted by an erupting green apple. On the side of the bowl, there appears to be a slice of watermelon, an obscure but specific sexual innuendo, and several small imaginary animals, all sexually referenced.
