I'm featuring three 20th century artists today, all of whom are famous, infamous and obscure, all the same time. They all achieved artistic fame; all three were infamous for their controversial lives and subjects; and all three are barely known outside of the worlds of arts and literature, where it is mainly scholars and coterie audiences which have kept their work alive and created renewed attention in their contributions.

I'm starting with Pierre Molinier (1900-1976), the greatest sex radical of the three. His themes, and presumably his life, were obsessed with transsexualism and sexual fabrications. Though he started out working with conventional themes he eventually drifted into surreal, haunting sexual dreamscapes that revolved around his personal fetishes. Using props, dolls, and himself as a model, Pierre Molinier created unforgettable landscapes of hermaphrodism and transvestism. His death was as strange as his imagination. Following in his father's footsteps, he killed himself in his 70s, leaving behind a suicide note written in chalk on his door that simply said, "I killed myself. The concierge has the key."

You can read about Molinier on Wiki. ArtNet has an excellent biography as well.

Before the astonishing work, a famously wicked quote from Moliniere:

Pierre Molinier

"Notre mission sur la Terre est de transformer le monde en immense BORDEL."

(Our mission on Earth is to transform the world into an enormous WHOREHOUSE.)

January 25, 2008 in Sex and Arts | Permalink

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