The consumption of erotic art in 18th century France around the time of the first revolution can be categorised into the three predominant hierarchical groups of society at the time, excluding the clergy whose stance on sexual expression has remained famously conservative; Aristocratic Art, Bourgeois Art and Third Estate Art, all in which we find, not a deliberate decline in morality caused by any one group, but a change in social ideologies inspired by Enlightenment thought. The erotic became an underlying theme in many neoclassical artworks and represented a return to naturalistic philosophies of virtue that were seen as heretical and treasonous because they undermined the sanctity of the monarchy. Sex became a hidden symbol of freedom, the first taboo to be conquered since Adam ate from the tree of knowledge and became aware of the “temptation” of carnal desire.
For the aristocracy, this desire was a demonstration of both power and virility. Whatever art a noble in 18th century France chose to patronise would reflect their rank at Versailles. After the death of Louis XIV the fashion at court turned towards the shock value of the Rococo, a style that evolved from the ornate Baroque, and became synonymous with a decadence that was heavily criticised by the developing bourgeoisie. Artists of the Rococo style such as Boucher and Fragonard appealed to aristocrats burdened by the duplicitous and sexually repressive nature of the absolutist regime, which held the aristocracy to higher standards of virtue than the lower classes while their hereditary titles exempted them from any responsibility of its loss. The Rococo became the confessional art of the upper class, illustrating the sexual exploits of the nobility, a titillating elusion to the abstract lives lead in secret by libertines such as the infamous Marquis De Sade who by their very nature rejected the regime they were born into.
It is interesting then that the influence of the Enlightenment on the Aristocracy paralleled its influence on philosophers such as Rousseau and Diderot, yet conversely worked to criticise the breakthrough it inspired in the upper classes. The educated artists and bourgeoisie, who frequented the art salons of l’Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, used modern art to criticise the monarchy subtly with neoclassical allegory. The loss of virtue associated with unbridled sexual desire became a metaphor for the hypocrisy the nobility espoused.
The starving Third Estate, however were not as delicate about the immorality of sex in their art. As the monarchy plunged France into massive debt with its epicurean expenditure at Versailles and participation in the American War for Independence against England, the workers of France toiled under the weight of a monarchy in financial ruin. Advancements in printing resulted in the prevalence of widely distributed propaganda that did away with subtlety, communicating to the public directly through sexually explicit, mocking, satire designed to decry and humiliate the subjects of their illustrations. These graphic images called libelles worked to accelerate the decline in the public’s opinion of the monarchy and became early examples of how the socially imposed taboo sexual pleasure has the ability to change the flow of political tides.
The popularity of the erotic in aristocratic circles can often be seen as a moral collapse of the upper class. However this degradation of Christian based values can be more accurately described as a covert sexual revolution that developed within the walls of Versailles. The aristocracy, though happily reaping the benefits of being born to money and property, were beginning to question the customs of a life lived in sullen piety masking their otherwise animalistic natures. The sexually charged games and innuendo showcased by artists such as Fragonard in his pastoral scenes of blushing maids and mischievous lovers were vilified by critics, yet tantalized the senses of French aristocrats who hid their second lives behind brocaded drapes and venetian masks.
During the rule of Louis XIV All courtly perversions were hidden from public view yet were common knowledge to all who lived in the palace. Court custom had been carefully constructed around Versailles and endured well into to the weakened reign of Louis XVI. But this ceremonial etiquette was “…borne unwillingly, [and] could not be breached from within, not only because the king demanded its preservation, but because the social existence of the people enmeshed in it was itself bound to it.”[1] Rococo represented a perverse consequence of this absolutist ideal. With the death of Louis XIV, the sacred virtues imposed upon the aristocracy during the catholic reformation, slowly began to crumble beneath the weight of the changing political climate and the fashion in art patronised by the nobility, influenced by enlightenment thought moved towards the shock value of sex. The Rococo exemplified hedonism at its most glorious, showcasing the erotic undercurrent of court life, using flamboyant colours and the neoclassical symbolism of chosen deities such as Eros, Psyche and Cupid to allude to the eroticism of otherwise innocent playful constructions of aristocratic life.
The most popular example of the rococo style is Jean-Honore Fragonard’s The Happy Hazards of the Swing (Fig.1), which depicts a woman, a noble patron’s mistress, being swung by a member of the clergy while the Patron, pictured in the bushes, shrewdly gazes up her skirt as she rocks back and forth, up and down in a frenzy of erotically charged brushwork. In the 18th century, “Swinging was not only enjoyed and popular because it occasioned erotic views, but because it liberated the body.”[2] ; giving the swinger a freeing experience of being weightless and unconstrained. The metaphor of the swing, in happy hazards represented the evolving values of a society increasingly influenced by the natural sciences. It mocked the clergy, who remained blind to the peaking interest in truth and reason, and confronted the viewer with their own sense of right and wrong. Happy Hazards, with its luscious greenery that conjures images of the Garden of Eden begs the question; can such sensual beauty and pleasure be considered immoral?
To maintain the status quo, most courtiers attempted to uphold their reputations by conforming to the church’s dogma regarding the virtues of abstinence. However, it was those who chose not to conform; those born to privilege yet martyred themselves on the altar of freedom that truly exemplified the ideological, political and sexual revolution of the 18th Century. The Marquis de Sade, the infamous novelist and libertine philosopher was himself consumed by the erotic in a way that incited scandal breaching all social barriers. Not only did de Sade reject the etiquette and ceremony of the aristocracy, he also rejected the imposed morality of the church, valuing reason over faith, which he viewed as a mask for true depravity. Simone De Beauvoir in her essay “Should we Burn De Sade?” explains that de Sade “was a republican and, in theory, even called for complete socialism and the abolition of property”. De Sade was spiteful of the hypocrisy of society. He objected to a “…world governed by those universal laws which he regarded as abstract false and unjust.”[3] And protested these values by existing according to a libertine philosophy, choosing a life of criminality and sexual debauchery, a rebellion that led to his imprisonment for most of his life.
De Sade saw the value in the arts like most philosophers and men of letters. Regardless of his pathology, the ideas espoused in his erotic novels mimicked the naturalist philosophies of writers such as Rousseau and Diderot. Art championed by these men stood to express virtues that were not accepted in the public sphere, and as it was the fashion, allegorically decry the status quo. Improvements in printing and engraving at the beginning of the industrial age assisted the free distribution of knowledge and ideas, and novels became more easily illustrated, and their ideas more vividly depicted.
De Sade’s erotic novel Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue, comparable to the vastly popular and less depraved Julie, or the new Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, tells the story of a pious, virtuous girl whose dedication to her faith and goodness leads her to the gallows while her sister Juliette’s choice of vice over virtue, described in a separate novel, ironically results in a comfortable and moral existence. The frontispiece chosen for Justine by the relatively unknown painter Philippe Chery, draws on the Greek parable of the Choice of Heracles[4] wherein the hero is visited by the two goddesses of Vice and Virtue; Kakia and Arête. The goddesses present Heracles with the choice between a life of luxury given to him through the suffering of others or a long and arduous life that will test is strength and faith in the gods, but will ultimately lead to a truer happiness.
The frontispiece reimagines the original parable by placing the goddess of Virtue, symbolising Justine’s character, at the forefront of the image being undressed by Kakia and Heracles, metaphorically unmasking the true nature of virtue. Below the image, the artist poses the question “Who knows, as the sky rains down upon us, if the greatest misfortunes aren’t good for us”[5] This question describes more accurately the parable of Heracles, but the image itself remains true to the intended moral of the Justine which suggests that making decisions based on the socially constructed idea of morality rather than personal gain does not always lead to happiness.
When one compares the Marquis de Sade’s Justine and the more romantic, yet equally melancholy novel La Nouvelle Heloise, one notices a similarity in philosophical thought. In both novels, the female protagonists begrudgingly choose to conform to rigid systemic views of virtue and in both novels die as a consequence of their actions. These parallels indicate a similarity in the ideologies held by both the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, who
This motif in the Marquis’ novels echoes the revolutionary ideals of most enlightenment philosophers and artists but differs in one aspect. De Sade saw a loss of virtue as a positive step towards revolution, however the bourgeoisie saw sexual immorality as a negative consequence of the affluence and entitlement of the nobility. It was not uncommon for neoclassical art during the time of the French Revolution to be critical of pre-conceived social constructs. Luminary philosophers would express their ideas through the exchange of letters, which they turned into epistolary novels describing the subliminal messages present in art often patronised by the aristocrats it condemned. Enlightenment philosophers were habitually debating the nature of man, his place in the world and the circumstances where a man might lose his virtue, an idea that is closely linked to God.
Many works of art at the 18th century salons were subject to scrutiny for their erotic undertones such as the work of Jean-Baptiste Greuze, whose subjects were those of sad or subjugated women, eyes averted from the viewer in shameful, repentant modesty. Though arguably not at all erotic by modern standards, at the salon of 1765, Denis Diderot described the painting of a Young girl weeping over her dead bird in the same lecherous manner befitting de Sade. He read the painting as an allegory for the young girl’s lost virginity commenting, “I don’t like to be the cause of suffering but all the same, I wouldn’t mind too much being the cause of her troubles. “[6]. The sadness of the young noble girl roused the critics to pity her lost virtue instead of shaming her for it as the clergy would or even praising her for it as the aristocracy might. Charles-Joseph Mathon de la Cour remarked that he had been “…intoxicated by a sweet and tender sadness that is better than sensual pleasure”[7] It is the modesty of her averted gaze that redeemed her of her perceived sins in the eyes of the learned bourgeoisie, a modesty that luminary philosophers found lacking in the Rococo art favoured by the aristocracy. This rejection of the rococo and the eroticisation of sadness and repentance indicates a
The lower class, unable to read or interpret most over-reaching allegorical images such as The Young Girl Weeping, consumed erotic art in an arguably more moralizing way than those with the privilege of money and education. To the third estate, sexual perversion in art, though just as commonplace as in the higher classes, was less allegorical and more satirical, the emphasis being on humiliation. Advancements in printing made way for citizens on the brink of revolution to begin the distribution of mass propaganda and anti-monarchy pamphlets called “libelles” with the sole aim of defaming aristocrats who were seen to be to blame for France’s debt, famine and perceived moral decline. Before the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the most common subject portrayed in these libelles was Queen Marie Antoinette, whose inability to produce an heir and Austrian heritage made her a quick scapegoat for the public’s tribulations. Etchings in these libelles were crudely pornographic, absurd and made no attempt at subtlety. The images were less critical of ideas in the way the Aristocracy and the Bourgeoisie chose to consume the erotic, rather they were more judgmental of particular people. In these libelles (fig 4), Marie Antoinette was portrayed as an immoral woman, illustrated in various states of undress and sexual depravity, which undermined her virtue, and as a consequence the monarchy. The irate third estate had no aim other than defamation and sex was the most immediate illustration of immorality as it was touted as a sin by the Catholic Church[8]
This use of erotic imagery to impugn the moral character of a person or a group of people was one that would have not been so popular had it not been for a rise in the number of printers and engravers. It was the fluidity of this erotic propaganda that begat the rumblings of revolution in 18th century France and turned eroticism in art into a tool for social upheaval.
The Marquis de Sade’s follow up to Les Malheurs de la Vertu, Juliette (fig.5), was a fully illustrated novella that depicted depraved, hedonistic, sexually charged scenes involving the clergy and the aristocracy that imitated the illustrations in political libelles in the same overt, mocking and satirical manner so as to defame the very concept of virtue. The similarities in the way the illustrations use erotica to mock people or concepts is an indicator of the power that sex had over society during the enlightenment.
The popularity of eroticism in the art of 18th century France could reflect a decline in the morality of the aristocracy, as their avid consumption of the puritanically sinful rococo would suggest, however it would be more accurate to view the popularity of erotic art as a collective rejection of the now archaic dictates of l’ancien regime. For the aristocracy, sexual expression in their art was a small but cutting dig at the suffocating customs of the upper class. The shock-value of sex became a rebellion for some aristocrats such as the sexually devious Marquis de Sade who saw the ceremony of the nobility as farcical and unjust. For the bourgeoisie sex was a metaphor for the loss of faith in the monarchy which only modesty and shame could make up for, and for the third estate, the erotic was a tool to bring about political change from a corrupt social order. Sex was the underlying taboo that chained most of society, and its significance in French art at the time was a depiction of the undercurrent of repressed sexual energy and the country’s hidden cries of freedom.
[1] Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. 1939. Ed. Eric Dunning, Johan Goudsblom and Stephen Mennell. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Maiden: Blackwell, 1994
[2] Milam, J., Playful constructions and Fragonard’s Swinging Scenes, Eighteenth Century Studies, Vol. 33, No.4 The Culture of Risk and Pleasure, p543-559, 2000
[3] De Beauvoir, Should we Burn De Sade? P.15, 1955
[4] Xenophon's Memorabilia 2.1.21–34
[5] De Sade, Donatien, Justine ou les infortunes de la Vertu, Frontispiece, Girouard, Paris, 1791 (Translation, Adriana Cleaver)
[6] Barker, Emma (2012), Reading the Greuze Girl: The daughter’s seduction, Representations, 117 pp. 86-119
[7] Charles-Joseph Mathon de la Cour, Troiseme Lettre a Monsieur Sure les peintures, les sculptures et les gravures exposee au Salon du Louvre en 1765 (Paris, 1765) Collection Deloynes, Biblioteque nationale, Paris, no. 110, no.3.
[8] Dabhoiwala, F., The Originis of Sex – a history of the first sexual revolution, 2012, Penguin Books, London
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