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25. Felicien Rops (1833-1898) Le Calvaire
Heliogravure and soft ground, ca. 1850, from Les Sataniques, 279 x 200 mm., Exsteens 787. Very fine, rich impression on imperial japan with full margins, signed with initials in red pencil. Saying that Rops had a vivid sexual imagination is like saying that water is usually wet. And yet the man, though statedly anti-clerical and enthralled with the demonic, was particularly firm in declaring his contempt for pornography and in his total denial that any of his works were pornographic. So what are we to make of this image? Firstly, the figure on the cross is not Christ, nor any caricature of Christ; it is the Devil. The scene exists in another world, one of demonic nightmares, in which elements torn from religion co-exist with sexual fantasies, in the same way that totally disparate elements come together in our dreams and nightmares. The smoking candles illuminate nothing but the main subject -- because there is nothing else there, no place, no real world, no real people. It is a tableau from the dreams of an artist who well remembered his weirdest dreams. |
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