The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde

As an art lover with a recent interest in surrealism and avant-garde art, I am enjoying Alyce Mahon's book that tells the story of how artists, writers and intellectuals explored Sadean imagination to develop their own works. It presents an encompassing look at the research on de Sade's life and work and how it impacted various artists, theaters and writers over the years. She explores the idea that this imagination might even be liberating to women.It is well-researched and includes numerous illustrations of art from the 1700's through the surrealism beginnings and beyond. It is a fine edition to any art, art history collection.

Six years on from the de Sade exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, new books on Sade keep coming. This year the exemplary catalog about Sade's influence upon sculptor Giacometti, celebrated the Paris exhibition Cruels objets du désir may win a Prix Sade literary award. Last winter brought the first complete English translation of Sade’s vast epistolary novel, Aline and Valcour, in a lavish, three-volume edition from Contra Mundum. This year, finally, we see the publication of The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde by Dr Alyee Mahon, Reader in Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Cambridge. This outstanding book is a substantial achievement but not necessarily in a way one might expect. Mahon goes her own way. She offers "close readings of selected case studies" in exploring the Sadean imagination, at "specific historical moments." Her research is thorough, if a little cold. The illustrations are well chosen, though fewer than one would hope. Sade's final years are detailed, though perhaps in a slightly confused manner. And one wonders if there is anything more to be said about the surrealists. Mahon says it again anyway. That said, this is a book to prize, and to return to. If only for the most welcome chapter about the publication of 'Story of O'.

Un affresco sulla presenza di Sade nella letteratura e nell'arte del Novecento. Molte notizie ma anche molte pagine (spesso prolisse) su fatti più che noti: la posizione dei surrealisti, l'affaire Pauvert, la genesi dell'Histoire d'O, Salò di Pasolini, etc. L'ultimo capitolo dove si parla di Guy Debord, Peter Weiss, Jean Benoit, artisti dove Sade è in un certo senso più marginale, offre alcuni spunti di riflessione. Un libro non per gli esperti ma per coloro che iniziano ad avvicinarsi all'universo senza tempo del divin Marchese.