PARIS.- In 2014, during Paris Photo,
Artcurial presented for sale an exceptional collection of photographs by André Kertész, assembled by a relative of the artist. On 13 November, during the Mois de la Photo, the Photography department will be auctioning a new major collection : the collection of nearly 200 works by Pierre Molinier compiled by Emmanuelle Arsan, one of the artist’s muses. It includes photographs, drawings, working snapshots and personal letters.
« Pierre Molinier is more than an artist or a photographer. His work, inspired by both disciplines, made him a contemporary artist ahead of his time. His gelatin silver prints, which he cut up and re-assembled, worked on with ink and re-photographed, all served to extend his pictorial universe. The artist realised that photography had the power to confuse reality, reflecting a more faithful image of himself than his mirror and providing the perfect medium for performing his own transformation into the ideal being : the androgyne, half man, half woman : the shaman. » explained Christophe Lunn, expert in Artcurial’s Photography department.
Christophe Lunn continued : « The artist donated the prints from Emmanuelle Arsan’s collection during his lifetime. Sometimes autographed, signed or annotated in his own hand, these proofs provide a unique insight into the mutual respect and admiration between two artists who shared the same reverence for pleasure and love. »
Pierre Molinier was known for his erotic paintings and photomontages. He created an ambiguous universe between androgyny and fetishism. The artist photographed himself in drag or placed himself in scenes with friends or models before cutting them up in order to recreate montages which he then photographed again so as to obtain extreme images representative of his ideals and obsession with the Shaman. His work, though strange, is both fresh and raw, as are his androgynous portraits.
The collection was assembled by Emmanuelle Arsan. Author of the erotic book Emmanuelle and co-director of the film subsequently adapted from it, she maintained a written correspondence with Pierre Molinier, which started in 1964 and lasted for more than 15 years. The writer and the artist, who confessed to mutual admiration, exchanged critiques and observations of each other’s work highlighting the creative processes of the artist/photographer. Together, they collaborated on one of Pierre Molinier’s major works : Le Chaman et ses Créatures. Part of this rich exchange of communication, which sheds light on the previously unpublished creative processes of the artist, will be on sale.
First acclaimed by André Breton in 1956, who called him the "magician of erotic art", Pierre Molinier was sidelined in 1959, after presenting his painting Le Grand Combat to the independent artists Salon in Bordeaux. Showing a couple in full coitus, the work was considered too erotic and covered with a black cloth. Often regarded as scandalous, misunderstood, Pierre Molinier was a forerunner to contemporary artists such as Claude Cahun, Robert Mapplethorpe and Cindy Sherman, for whom the shooting of a picture was just one step in the creative process. A fetishist and enthusiastic transvestite, Molinier sought, first through his painting and then through the realism of photography, to create an ideal and visually credible androgynous being. In reworking his photographs with ink, cutting them up, re-assembling and re-photographing them, Molinier blurred the boundaries between reality and fantasy, truth and fiction.
Only after his death in 1974 did the artist attain a certain notoriety. In 1979 the Centre Pompidou dedicated a solo exhibition to him. His book on Le Chaman was published posthumously.
Emmanuelle Arsan (born Marayat Bibidh) and her husband Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane, a French diplomat serving in Thailand, dedicated a significant amount of space in their home in Bangkok to the work of Molinier. The artist’s drawings and photographs from this collection will be offered at auction for the first time.
