Pierre Molinier

Pierre Molinier (1900-1976, Agen, France) studied as a painter, turning to fetishtic eroticism in 1950. Believing the androgynous hermaphrodite to be the ideal, balanced sex, Molinier employed his own body, along with a wide range of specially made props: prosthetic limbs, stiletto heels, elaborate godemichés (the French word for dildos), black net stockings, lingerie, masks and the occasional trusted friend in performative acts of transformation. Intended to shock, the resulting photomontages depict intimate portraits of spiritual and erotic rapture that Molinier acted out in the theater of his Bordeaux boudoir. André Breton integrated Molinier into the Surrealist group with an exhibition of his paintings in Paris in 1956. That same year, Molinier began contributing to the magazine Le surrélisme, même and started taking his erotic photographs. In 1959, he exhibited at the Exposition International du Surrealism in Paris. His work is included in the collections of The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), The Israel Museum (Jerusalem), among others. Like his father before him, Molinier committed suicide at 76 years of age by a self-inflicted gunshot while masturbating. Considered by some as the “forgotten Surrealist,” Molinier is now the subject of over a dozen monographs and exhibition catalogs, and his work has inspired artists since the 1970s, foreseeing the works of Andy Warhol, Vito Acconci, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman and others. Historians are now recognizing him as one of the first performance artists, and his work has recently been included in exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Tate Modern (London), and at the 2013 Venice Biennale, a room was devoted to his work in the main exhibition, The Encyclopedic Palace, at the Arsenale curated by Massimiliano Gioni.