
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.