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

 

Dreams of Desire 64 (Boucher’s Odalisques)

Portrait of Marie-Louise O’Murphy (Blonde Odalisque)-Francois Boucher 1752

During the period when Baroque reigned supreme, overt eroticism all but disappeared from Western Art. It would take the emergence of Rococo, the florid, playful and frankly somewhat sluttish younger French sister of Baroque, to take art back into the boudoir.

Francois Boucher was one of the leading lights of Rococo and enjoyed the patronage of the prime mover of the style, Madame de Pompadour, the Official Chief Mistress of King Louis XV. As well as mythological genres scenes featuring Venus he painted two odalisques stripped of all allegorical trappings, the L’Odalisque Brune from 1745 and the L’Odalisque Blonde from 1752.

France was ongoing a vogue for the mysterious, exotic East during the Ancien Regime. Several libertine novels including Denis Diderot Les bijoux indiscrets (The Indiscreet Jewels) and Crebillon Fils La Sopha (The Sofa) are set in fantasy Oriental lands, partly to give full reign to the imagination but also to disguise the political satire on the luxuriant and decadent Court of Louis XV. Part of the attraction, for men anyway, were the stories of odalisques; mistresses or concubines in a harem.

Boucher’s L’Odalisque Brune from 1745 was reportedly a portrait of Madame Boucher , which led Diderot, Encyclopedist and somewhat risque writer of the above-mentioned  Les bijoux indiscrets and La Religieuse (The Nun) to state that Boucher was prostituting his wife.  L’Odalisque Blonde is a portrait of the courtesan Marie-Louise O’Murphy. King Louis XV was so taken with this painting that he arranged for Marie-Louise to become a petite maitresse (lesser mistress). At least one of her children was the King’s.

L’Odalisque Brune-Francois Boucher 1745

The Sleepers

Le Sommeil-Gustave Courbet 1866

Inspired by Charles Baudelaire’s poem Femmes damnees Delphine et Hippolyte (Damned Women Delphine and Hippolyte) from his famous collection Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) which had resulted in prosecution, a hefty fine and the suppression of  six poems as an insult to public decency upon its initial publication, Courbet’s masterful realist erotic painting Le Sommeil (The Sleepers) with its provocative depiction of lesbianism led to a police report when it was first shown in 1872 and was not subsequently allowed to be publicly exhibited until 1988.

1866 was also the year that Courbet completed a commission for his most famous erotic painting L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World) with its graphic close up view of a naked woman’s genitals and abdomen. In February 2016 a Paris court has ruled that Facebook may be sued in France for removing the image from users pages.

Screens

La Paravent-Toyen 1966

An eerie and mysterious painting from Marie Cerminova, known as Toyen, one of the leading members of the very active Czech Surrealist Group. Her work included oil paintings, photo-montages and line drawings in a distinctive style, often featuring explicit erotic imagery, bizarre juxtapositions and startling metamorphosis. Toyen also illustrated the Marquis De Sade’s Justine.