How art can break down barriers: the Marquis de Sade and the avant-garde
How art can break down barriers: the Marquis de Sade and the avant-garde
The writings of the Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) present a libertine philosophy of sexual excess and human suffering that refuses to make any concession to law, religion, or public decency. In this groundbreaking cultural history, Alyce Mahon traces how artists of the twentieth century turned to Sade to explore political, sexual, and psychological terror, adapting his imagery of the excessively sexual and terrorized body as a means of liberation from systems of power.
This event is part of the Trinity Resarch Talks series.
Speakers
Dr Alyce Mahon
Alyce Mahon is a Reader in Modern & Contemporary Art History at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
She is the author of the monographs Surrealism and the Politics of Eros, 1938-1968 (Thames & Hudson, 2005), Eroticism & Art (Oxford University Press, 2005 and 2007) and The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde (Princeton University Press, 2020), as well as numerous essays on Surrealism, performance art, and feminist art practice. She is the curator of Dorothea Tanning, the first major retrospective exhibition of the American Surrealist, for the Museo Reina Sofia (Oct. 3, 2018 –Jan. 7, 2019) and Tate Modern (Feb. 27–June 6, 2019), and has served as curatorial advisor and author for many international Surrealist exhibitions – most recently for Leonor Fini: Theatre of Desire 1930-1990, Museum of Sex, New York (Sept. 28, 2018-March 4, 2019), Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and Musée Bourdelle, Paris, 2015), and Leonora Carrington (Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2013). She is currently completing a monograph on Dorothea Tanning for Yale University Press for publication in 2021.
