'Spring Awakening' (1989) shows Renate Bertlmann at her best. A three-metre-long painting depicting phallic ‘mushrooms’ springing from a grassy flower bed, the work embodies the artist’s use of representation of male genitalia as an instrument of parodic critique. In its link between the anatomical and the symbolic phallus as foregrounded in the writings of Freud and Lacan, 'Spring Awakening' (1989) is a work engaging with the seriousness and complexity of the matter in a playful, yet powerful way. The depiction of the phallus is often deployed by Bertlmann to challenge the patriarchal order and puts this work in dialogue with the most renowned and transgressive examples of feminist art, from Louise Bourgeois’s 'Fillette' (1968) or Judith Bernstein’s 'FIVE PANEL VERTICAL' (1973) to more recent woks such as Sarah Lucas' 'Florian' (2013).