Death’s Discoteca

 

Clovis-Trouille-Mon-Tombeau

 

Soulless automaton,
pallid vampire,
with your amphetamine blush,
ceaseless opiated caresses
if only looks could melt.
Last of the gravers,
nodding away
at death’s discoteca
do you miss
that old morbid élan,
with real live girls,
packets of gear,
being the man,
making them wait?
You ain’t who you
used to be anymore,
hollowed out by the night,
spooked by a thousand insomnias,
an uncertain spectre
at the feast of the auto-cannibals:
paying the heavenly revenue service
the vig for deceiving syntax;
now every lying word turns to ash
within your pitted and parched mouth,
and every cruel intention,
conning misdirection
is now a stone within
your bloated stomach.
Pallid vampire,
soulless automaton,
time to open the curtains
and let the sunshine flood in.

Illustrating the Divine Marquis

The Voyeur-Clovis Trouille 1960

The controversial life and work of the Marquis De Sade, the man so diabolical he was called divine, is still the subject of much debate between apologists who defend him as the apostle of total freedom, and his detractors who view him as a vile libertine possessed with an over-weening feudal sense of entitlement and a virulent misogynist. The question that Simone De Beauvoir nervously asked in 1951, ‘Must We Burn Sade?‘, is still no closer to being answered satisfactorily. But maybe it will never be, as the challenge De Sade lays down is an impossible one.

Regardless of De Sade’s ambiguous position in culture, what is not in doubt is the influence he possessed over the Surrealist movement. Andre Breton name checks the Marquis in the Surrealist Manifesto and he is included in the Pope of Surrealism‘s Anthology of Black Humour (with good reason, De Sade possessed a cruel, sharp wit on occasion), and it seems to have been de rigeur for Surrealists artists to reference and/or illustrate the Divine Marquis.

Below are examples from various artists, many of whom are favourites here. I have written about Toyen on many occasions and have highlighted her repeated rifts on Sadean subjects (see especially At the Chateau La Coste). Her artistic partner Jindrich Strysky provided a cover for Philosophy in the Boudoir, as well as producing the erotic story Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream. Valentine Hugo‘s images have graced several headers of my poems and stories, including several of her illustrations for Eugenie de Franval. The Argentinian artist Leonor Fini was another woman Surrealist who astounded with her frank depiction of erotic subjects and was instinctively drawn to illustrating Juliette. Finally in this post is the deliriously lurid and low-brow paintings of Clovis Trouille, whose entire oeuvre appears to be a psychedelic actualisation on canvas of a Sadean scenario of the mind.

 

 

Toyen-Justine

Toyen

Jindrich Strysky-Cover for Philosophy in the Boudoir

Jindrich Strysky-Emilie Comes to Me In a Dream 1933

Leonor Fini-Juliette

Valentine Hugo-Eugenie de Franval 1948

Leonor Fini-Juliette

Leonor Fini-the lovers

Clovis Trouille-Rêve Claustral

Toyen-Justine

Leonor Fini-L’Entre Deux-1967

Valentine Hugo-Eugenie de Franval 1948

Clovis Trouille-My Tomb 1947

Clovis Trouille-Dolmancé et ses fantômes de luxure

 

The Erotic Ink of Apollonia Saintclair

 

Apollonia Saintclair-Les Grandes découvertes (The Age of Discovery)

The rather evocatively named Apollonia Saintclair (presumably a pseudonym that conjures up  images, in my mind, at least, of a Bond villainess and a vixen of a heroine in a French libertine novel) provocative and very erotic illustrations have gathered a huge and obsessive following on Instagram and Tumblr for the mysterious, secretive artist.

Saintclair’s veritable pornocupia of fantasies, kinks and fetishes locate sex and desire as the nexus of a wide range of human emotions. Her black and white images are suggestive of pulp, noir and, on occasion, the gleeful decadence of Beardsley and Von Bayros; while shot through with a delightful insolent wit that ranges from the mischievous to the macabre.

In her interviews Saintclair has expressed her admiration for the pioneering photographer and artist Man Ray who was noted for his use of visual puns and rhymes, which quickly became a hallmark of early Surrealism. In drawings such as La Bonne Poire (The Juicy Fruit) and La Trouvaille (There you are), Saintclair expands (in conjuration with their disingenuous titles) the potential of the visual pun that elicits the shock of suppressed recognition from the viewer. The startling La Mort Douce (The Sweet Death) with its inversion of the Biblical tale of St John the Baptist and Salome has, however, far more sinister connotations.

Although obviously well-versed in art history in general and erotic art in particular, and while her work contains echoes of everything from Clovis Trouille’s sultry, sapphic nuns to the ceaseless caresses of octopi in Japanese shunga, Saintclair has developed a unique style with a distinctive contemporary take on eroticism from a vantaged (and still a rarity in erotic art) female perspective.

The English philosopher Francis Bacon is quoted as saying the job of the artist is to always deepen the mystery. While there is nothing more mysterious in human experience than sex, involving as it does the body, mind and soul in conjuration like no other comparable activity, the erotic artist is placed in a paradoxical position. After all, the role of erotic art is, by its very definition, to show and tell. Revealing too much strips away the mystery and the initial charm is soon lost. Revealing  too little, however, means it isn’t erotic art. Apollonia Saintclair performs that miraculous balancing act of showing us just enough to deepen the mystery and leaving us longing for more.

Apollonia Saintclair- Le silence des cigales (The midnight lights)

Apollonia Saintclair-Les cinq âmes soeurs (The five soulmates)

Apollonia Saintclair-La rencontre rapprochée ( The close encounter)

Apollonia Saintclair- La mort douce (The sweet death)

Apollonia Saintclair-La Trouvaille (There You Are…)

Apollonia Saintclair-La Bonne Poire (The Juicy Fruit) 2016

Apollonia Saintclair-L’Itaphalle (Can’t Get of your love, Darling)

Apollonia Saintclair-L’invocation (The summoning)

Apollonia Saintclair- L’affût (Lying in wait)

Dreams of Desire 10 (Sisters of the Immaculate Silk Stockings)

Clovis Trouille-Dialogue au Carmel  1944

Another painting from Trouille representing the dubious Sisters of the Immaculate Silk Stocking. This one has it all; lustrous drapes, cigarette smoking, a crucifix, a skull and moulded phallic candles.

Dreams of Desire 9 (Italian Nun Smoking A Cigarette)

Clovis Trouille-Religieuse Italienne Fumant la Cigarette 1945

Another luridly kitsch fevered fantasy from the kinky imagination of Clovis Trouille. The kind of nun never seen outside the pages of a certain kind of novel.