i first encountered this painting at a Felicien Rops exhibit in Venice about a thousand years ago. tonight i rediscover it on my cyber-meanderings in a search for thoughts on the Grotesque, and it Delights me once again. yay yay Yay.
"My Pornocratie is complete. This drawing delights me. I would like to show you this beautiful naked girl, clad only in black shoes and gloves in silk, leather and velvet, her hair styled. Wearing a blindfold she walks on a marble stage, guided by a pig with a "golden tail" across a blue sky. Three loves - ancient loves - vanish in tears (...) I did this in four days in a room of blue satin, in an overheated apartment, full of different smells, where the opopanax and cyclamen gave me a slight fever conducive towards production or even towards reproduction".
Letter from Rops to H. Liesse, 1879.
followed by some further thought on the piece from www.jahsonic.com
"For some the pig with the golden tail represents the image of luxury and lucre steering the woman, whose only excuse is her blindness; for others, it is the image of man, bestial and stupid, kept in check by the woman. This image of the pig, as well as those of the puppet and the pierrot are shared by many of Rops’ contemporaries.
Pornokrates heralds the advent to the art world of the contemporary woman which Rops glorified. She is characterised by her arrogance, her composure and her ruthlessness."
1879, ladies and gentlemen. 1879.
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