Galerie Dennis Cooper presents … Félicien Rops

 

‘There are few nineteenth century artists as controversial or as profoundly shocking as Félicien Rops. Even more than a century after his death, his “blasphemous erotica” can still cause great offense in a world of safe spaces and trigger warnings.

‘Rops was born in Namur, Belgium in 1833, the son of a wealthy cotton dealer. He was home schooled by a private tutor before attending Jesuit college where he excelled at art. However, he hated the intense Catholic education and quit college at sixteen. He then went onto finish his education at Royal Athenaeum. His talent for art flourished and he achieved some early success as a caricaturist for the student magazine Le Crocodile and local magazines. But it was as a lithographer and etcher that he proved his technical brilliance and unparalleled artistic talent. He co-founded with Charles De Coste the satirical magazine L’Uylenspiegel (1856-1863). They mercilessly attacked Church and State, the bourgeoisie and artistic pretensions. The magazine made both men (in)famous—Rops was even challenged to a duel after one particular provocative attack.

‘He married, had two children (one dying in childhood), separated from his wife and moved to Paris in 1862. His arrival in the City of Lights changed Rops dramatically—he was like a wide-eyed yokel driven to excess by the thrill of the metropolis. He began to draw and paint with a fevered intensity the world he inhabited. He exhibited some of his work back in his hometown of Namur in 1865—in particular a portrait of a female absinthe drinker (La Buveuse d’Absinthe) which so outraged critics and civic figures that he was denounced by an official rebuke for prostituting his pencil in “the reproduction of scenes imprinted with a repellent realism.” The response pleased Rops—though he described it as akin to being spat upon—as it meant he had found his right subject matter: the dark and neglected and unacknowledged underworld of everyday life. This led Rops to co-found the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts—a group set up to promote “realism” in art in 1868.

‘Another key event was his meeting with the writer Baudelaire, whose work confirmed many of Rops’ personal beliefs. He illustrated Baudelaire’s banned volume of poetry Les Fleurs du Mal and became one of the resident artists of the Decadent Movement—though he also had a place in the Symbolist camp.

‘The Decadent Movement was a loose collection of artists and writers who came to prominence in the last two decades—or fin de siècle—of the 1800s. The term Decadent was originally intended to be disparaging—but Baudelaire and Rops considered it a suitable description of their lifestyle and work. The Decadents were in revolt against the constrictive and petite bourgeoise morality of the day. But even this doesn’t quite tell the complete truth. Though Rops had rejected much of his Catholic upbringing—he had some lingering religious beliefs. He was a Freemason—and some of his work was highly anti-Catholic. Take a look at his pornographic re-imagining of the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa being “penetrated” by the lance of the seraphim. He had a fear of women but was for a time happily married and then lived in a menage a trois with two sisters. He was rational but was superstitiously obsessed with the occult—in particular the power of the Devil. He railed gainst the petite bourgeoisie and against fame but harbored a desire for success—on his own terms.

‘The novelist Péladan said of Rops in La Plume (1896):

Three hundred subtle minds admire and love him, and this approbation of thinkers is all that matters to this master; if a man of the middle classes, one of those for whom popular works are written and who actually read them, should happen to show a liking for one of his works, he would immediately destroy it. As a patrician of art, he wishes for no other judges than but his peers, and not out of pride. The best token of his modesty is the fact that he is so little known and that is how he wants it, because he knows that Art is a druidic cult which receives into its ranks all minds that rise high enough.

‘While the author JK Huysmans described Rops as:

…not confined himself, like his predecessors, to rendering the attitudes of bodies swayed by passion, but has elicited from flesh on fire the sorrows of fever-stricken souls, and the joys of warped minds; he has painted demonic rapture as other have painted mystical yearnings. Rops has not confined himself, like his predecessors, to rendering the attitudes of bodies swayed by passion, but has elicited from flesh on fir the sorrows of fever-stricken souls, and the joys of warped minds; he has painted demonic rapture as other have painted mystical yearnings.

‘Rops described his work as “structured mainly around the themes of love, suffering and death, with the central unifying theme of the woman, la femme fatale “in the full meaning of the word.” According to Rops the la femme fatale is:

‘Satan’s accomplice, [a woman who] becomes the supreme attraction which provokes the most extreme vices and torments in Man, a mere puppet.

‘This image is repeated throughout Rops work—and even when man attempts to repress his desire—as in his painting The Temptation of Saint Anthony—where (as Sigmund Freud notes) he has “placed Sin in the place of the Savior on the cross”

‘He seems to have known that when what has been repressed returns, it merges as the repressing force itself.

‘Rops’ work has been described as blasphemous, sadistic, sexist, misogynistic, pornographic, debased and even cruel—but that strikes me as responding to the effect or the surface rather than the substance of his work—which is far more complex and far more telling of Rops’ own fears and anxieties.’ — Paul Gallagher

 

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Further

Félicien Rops @ Wikipedia
The Musée Félicien Rops in Namur
Félicien Rops @ Internet Archive
BEYOND EROS: WORKS BY FÉLICIEN ROPS IN THE MICHAEL C. CARLOS MUSEUM
Book: ‘Félicien Rops: 1833 1898’
Fonds Félicien Rops
Félicien Rops: The Irreverent Symbolist
Photomechanical Processes in the Work of Félicien Rops
The art of Félicien Rops, 1833–1898
EROTICISM AND SATANISM IN THE ART OF FÉLICIEN ROPS

 

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Extras

Felicien Rops: The Art of Decadence

[RARE] Charles BAUDELAIRE – Face à Félicien Rops (DOCUMENTAIRE, 1994)

Musée Félicien Rops – Namur

Félicien Rops: Belgian Symbolist and Fin-de-Siècle Artist

 

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Joris-Karl Huysmans on Félicien Rops

 

Lust has not given birth, for its part, to any work that is truly strong. And we had to reach our time to find an artist who thought of really exploring these Antarctic regions unknown to art. Adopting the old concept of the Middle Ages, that man floats between Good and Evil, struggles between God and the Devil, between Purity which is of divine essence and Lust which is the Devil itself, Mr. Félicien Rops , with the soul of a Primitive in reverse, accomplished the opposite work of Memlinc; he penetrated and summarized Satanism in admirable plates which are, as inventions, as symbols, as incisive and nervous, fierce and heartbroken art, truly unique.
—-But, it must be said, Mr. Rops did not reach this synthesis of Evil at once. In the agile frontispieces that he once engraved for the libertine works reprinted by Poulet-Malassis in Brussels, he simply reveals a mocking and impious verve, a bizarre and quick imagination.
—-With a sometimes underlined spirit, he completes plates, sometimes elegant and ribboned like those of the 18th century – such as the etching which precedes the “Théâtre Gaillard” or the “Point de Lendemain,” by Vivant Denon – sometimes he summed up in very personal allegories, of absolute freedom of appearance. Among these, we can cite his etchings of the “Satirical Parnassus”, one: where flights of tiny women and little bacchantes climb after the rigid bounty of a Terme whose goat’s beard is bursts with joy, while, with his good father’s eyes, he contemplates one of the women who rides, distraught, on the top of his formidable member and who stretches out her arms, cries, swooning, grace, while his companions hang, screaming, from the spheres of its heavy wineskins; the other, representing the scene reversed: a troop of small aegypans who attack an armless faun, crowned with vine branches, with pointed ears and heavy breasts. She also delights, smiles, maternal and lascivious, at these little goats’ feet which take her throat, crawl on her large belly, poke into the pit of her navel, slip like a cat flap, into the half-open pod of her penis. But one of the most ingenious, most vehement works of this series is still the one which precedes the small volume of “Joyeusetés du Vidame de la Braguette”, by poor Glatigny.
—-Imagine a good scoundrel from Flanders sitting, his belly cool, holding the folded down basin of his breeches; he laughs to the point of tears, exuberates and chokes, while a swarm of cute creatures rushes over his prodigious nakedness which stands like a lighthouse whose base plunges into thick thickets.
—-And they are incredible, these dwarf nymphomaniacs! Never, until then, had we rendered with such a sense of hot flesh, with such passion, this madness of cats in heat! Tightened, they cling to the tufts with fists, climb the mast, go around the bags, hoist themselves on top of each other, devour each other and tumble into dying clusters. All this removed from a perennial and grounding design, drilling and sure. Then, in its boards, the Lingam displays the most unexpected, strange shapes. At rest, as in the frontispiece of Delvau’s “Erotic Dictionary”, it simulates a butterfly with a human face: the nose drawn by the soft stem, the eyes located at the top, under the fleece, the cheeks imitated by the two purses. At work, as in the Vidame etching, it turns into a figurine, the frenulum is sculpted into a nose and a mouth, the top becomes a Turkish turban, topped with a sour liquid.
—-But this etching to which many others could join is, in short, in the engraved work of Mr. Rops, only an alert and a joke. All those that I have reviewed are only ironic and scabrous, some almost boastful in their enthusiasm.
—-We will now point out his work itself; the woman will emerge demonic and terrible, treated by a talent which amplifies and condenses as the concept of Satanism of which I spoke appears, in a return of Catholic ideas.
—-Obviously, Mr. Rops had to embody Possession in the woman. And, in doing so, he agreed with the Fathers of the Church, with the entire Middle Ages, even Antiquity; because, dealing with couples accused of magic, Quintilian already wrote: “presumption is greater than the woman who is a witch. » Besides, it is enough for the woman to be bewitched for the man who approaches her to become infected; “Satan, through women, attracts men to his rope,” Bodin attested, paraphrasing the Middle Ages which affirmed, in all the declarations of its exorcists, that there were fifty female witches or demoniacs for every man.
—-Moreover, whether we accept or reject the theory of Satanism, is it not still the same today? Isn’t man led into misdemeanors and crimes by woman who is, herself, almost always lost to her fellow man? She is, in short, the great vase of iniquities and crimes, the charnel house of misery and shame, the true introducer of the embassies delegated into our souls by all vices.
—-We can also add, remaining within the circle traced by the Catholics, that the Demon was willingly incarnated in her and coupled, in this form, at night, with men. He was then the Succubus or the Ephialtes. Mr. Rops therefore followed the immutable tradition of the centuries, while, in his satanic work, he chose as the main character the woman, cursed by the Devil and venerating, in turn, the man who touches her.
—-On the other hand, he had to bring the Demon himself into the fearsome scenes he was meditating on.
—-And this provokes long reveries, evokes the monstrous memories that the demonographers have noted.
—-We think of leaving for the Sabbath, of the ointments extracted from mandrakes, henbanes, and the juices of nightshades, with which the women coated their bodies; we think of the philters with which they got drunk, philters composed, according to Del Rio, “of menstrual flow, semen, cat or donkey brains, hyena belly, wolf genitals and above all of hippomania which leaks from the parts of horses when they are in heat. » Then, the ride in the clouds is followed by the descent into the clearing where the Devil, in the form of the Satyr or the Goat, extends his buttock, black and hairy, which is kissed; all around, children walk toads around the ponds, because, says Lancre, “Satan keeps them away for fear of putting them off forever, by the horrible sight of so many things. » And the black mass is celebrated on the bare rump of a woman; we sit on benches, we gorge ourselves on human soup, on the flesh of children from which we suck the blood from the navel and the back of the neck; we chew the bones which, over the past year, cooked with certain herbs, have become soft like turnips. Deprived of the salt which prevents corruption, bread is made with these ears which rust has struck and in which seeds of disease, germs of death, ferment; the wine is a furious wine whose vines grew in the warm ashes of the volcanoes; blasphemies rise, we commune with the black host stamped with a goat, the torches go out, men, women, whirl, mate; each one plunges into the illicit vessels, tries to join, to practice incest, his daughter or his mother, strives to make them fat, in order to be able to slaughter and eat, in a future Sabbath, the child born of these hideous works!
—-In these actions there were ardent joys now lost and pains impossible in our time. Mr. Rops understood this and in some of his plates, he expressed these excesses of joy and suffering in a terrible way.
—-This is where the personality of these boards lies. A talented painter would perhaps have rendered this carnal ardor, this ferocity of rut, simulated, after nature, the ardent face of satyriasics and nymphomaniacs, finally created a material work confined in the aberrations of the reproductive senses, and without any other beyond that, but I now know of none who could, like Mr. Rops, have made the enraged soul of the cursed woman, possessed, poked, in all her ideas, fulminate by the genius of Evil.
—-We could, in short, after a few final explanations, summarize thus, I believe, the addition it brings to art:
—-Unlike his colleagues who were almost all born in stables and basements and whose education took place in municipal schools and howlers, Mr. Rops, exempt from worker or peasant origins and invested with a entirely literary education, is the only one who, among the plebs of pencil artists, is capable of formulating the syntheses of the frontispiece of which he remains the sole master, above all the only one who is capable of producing a work in which the past of the ‘eternal Vice.
—-Initiated in these matters, now omitted, by Baudelaire and by Barbey d’Aurévilly who had preceded him on the path of Satanism, he explored it to its limits and, in a different art, he is truly the one who noted the diabolical extent of carnal passions.
—-He restored to Lust so stupidly confined in the anecdote, so basely materialized by certain people, its mysterious omnipotence; he religiously placed it in the infernal framework in which it moves and, by this very fact, he did not create obscene and positive works, but rather Catholic works, fiery and terrible works.
—-He did not limit himself, like his predecessors, to rendering the passionate attitudes of bodies, but he brought forth burning flesh, the pains of feverish souls and the joys of distorted minds; he painted demonic ecstasy as others painted mystical impulses. Far from the century, in a time when materialist art only sees hysterics eaten by their ovaries or nymphomaniacs whose brains beat in the regions of the stomach, he celebrated, not the contemporary woman, not the Parisian, whose simpering graces and shady adornments escaped his apertises, but the essential and timeless Woman, the poisonous and naked Beast, the mercenary of Darkness, the absolute servant of the Devil.
—-He, in a word, celebrated this spiritualism of Lust that is Satanism, painting, in imperfect pages, the supernatural of perversity, the beyond of Evil.

 

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p.s. So sad about the great and sublime Shelley Duval RIP. Just her performance in Altman’s ‘Three Women’ alone is a masterclass. Lucy K Shaw and I had a fun conversation about FLUNKER and other things @ Interview Magazine if you want to read it. ** Dominik, Hi!!! It’s a pretty great novel, yeah. See, your mail experience matches a lot of my mail experiences to the T. Grr. I think the slaves genuinely like sniffing farts. Maybe it’s like scat with training wheels or something? I hope that cough didn’t projectile infect you. Surely, love has saved the day. Love making Satan real just long enough for him to record a cover version of ‘Superbeast’, G. ** Joe, Hi, Joe! So awesome to see you! Yes, the film mess is infuriating, but it will come to a conclusion somehow, I have no idea how, but it has to. Oh, god, no, never ever ever again will we work with or even acknowledge the existence of our producer from hell. The book you’re asking about is ‘Bobby BlueJacket’ by Michael P. Daley. I find Guibert very uneven. I hated a couple of his books so much that they kind of soured me on him, but ‘Friend’ is really good. His prose can be a bit precious/elitist, but he does it well when he does it well. Amazing news about you finishing the draft! Fantastic! I just finished the first draft of the script of Zac’s and my hopefully next film, so let’s root each other on. xoxo. ** M4ts, Hi, M4ts! Thank you for entering, it’s really good to meet you. Sure, when you’re at the point you need with that piece of writing, hit me up, and I’ll tell you where to send it to me. Great luck with that. Uh, yeah, I never had a confidence problem, but I never thought of myself in comparison to other writers. I never felt like what I was trying to do had any relationship to what other writers were doing, and I was lucky because the period when I grew up and worked at being a writer was a time when adventurousness and experimenting in books, films, music, etc. was prized and kind of viral, popularity-wise, and taken seriously by critics and stuff, so the world seemed like a positive, growing place. It still is, but now you have to hunt down artists and readers/ viewers who want things to surprise and revise them. But they’re there. I guess I don’t really take adulthood and professionalism seriously. I don’t see what they have to do with my writing. It’s just time passing and expectations shifting or something. I don’t know. I guess I would try not to let what’s dominant in the culture infect you. That’s just the color of the moment really. I like Walser, yes. ‘Jakob von Gunten’ is great. It had a real impact on me. ‘His style varied but intended always to hide what he had to say’: sounds so right, and that really speaks to me and to my writing, or my to attempt anyway. Again, pleasure to speak with you. Do come back if you feel like it. ** _Black_Acrylic, From living in Holland in the 80s and discovering football/soccer whilst there and then becoming a big fan of Ajax, I still always hope the Netherlands win, alas in this case. ** Lucas, Hi! Gosh, we’re hoping so about the festivals. That’s totally a legitimate approach. It’s coming from you, and you’re totally unique, and your art is/will be totally unique, so it will be unique and not like anything else by default. It can’t be tired, because your work is new. No worries. I hope luck lets you get the developed photos before the weekend presumably stalls things out for a day or so. Big day today to you. It’s nice and cold and grey here. I’m going to be able to wear my coat outside and everything. ** Tosh Berman, Ha ha, well, ‘met’ is pushing it. Do you know that restaurant Dan Tana’s, right next to the Troubadour? My parents took the family to dinner there, and there was Cary Grant sitting across the restaurant having dinner with some young guy who I now suppose must’ve been his boyfriend or fuckbuddy, and I had my autograph book with me, and I just sort of brashly walked over to his table and asked if I could have his autograph. He glanced up at me, and said, ‘Mm’, and took my autograph book, opened it, and scrawled his name and gave it back. I said, ‘Thank you’, and he smiled fakely at me and said ‘Mm’. But his ‘mm’ did have that kind of Cary Grant-ish lilt to it. ** Pascal O’Loughlin, Whoa, Pascal! Man oh man, it’s been a long time! Not since the google murder of my old blog, right? How great to see you! Thank you a lot about our films. I’m so happy to hear that. The problems finishing the new one are hellish, but it wil be finished and birthed whatever that takes. How are you? What’s going on with you, if you don’t mind saying? Wow, really good to see you, old pal! ** Thomas H, It was trippy reading myself. I liked it. Nice: the drive. I remember Ruffles. ‘Rrrruffles have rrrrridges’, as the ads used to say. Canadians have that sweet accent that ‘South Park’ used to max out. I have Canadian friends who talk like that. Thanks for the backstory re: Silicon Knights. That’s sad. It has been one of the long-standing biggest mysteries to me why there was never an ‘Eternal Darkness 2’. Your read on the ‘Frisk’ film sounds right. Araki was supposed to direct it at one point, but he backed out. Maybe I’ll try to watch it only looking for its time capsule qualities. That might work. Thanks a lot. Happy weekend’s start. What are you looking forward to most in Seattle? ** Steve, I think there might still be a couple of untranslated Guibert books, but most of them are in English now, I think. I liked your song. Your friend’s description or it kind of wonderfully nailed it, haha. Thanks, yeah, about the programmer’s enthusiasm. It really was much, much needed. I saw that VAS-TU RECONCER was playing here, but I didn’t know what it was. Maybe it’s still around. I’ll check, Thanks. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David! I’m so happy to see you back again! Your love of ‘Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train’ its totally legendary. And completely understandable. I hope you’re doing really well. Love, me. ** Nika Mavrody, No, I don’t know slambook, but I will investigate. Hm. I do know that about Trump, yes. Me too too! ** Joseph, Hey. There’s no late around here really. Unless I’m late, I guess. Witchcraft shops are cool, but, no, I love the magic tricks themselves, all those colorful tubes and rabbit-eating hats and trick cards and magic scarves and all that stuff. There’s a Museum of Witchcraft here. It’s actually really spooky, like the proprietors and guards are going to kidnap you or something. Anyone to whom Halloween was a huge deal is a big deal to me by default. Awesome if the post transpires. Beat that dumb job into submission. ** Harper, Ah, cool, about the favoritism of that book. I also really like its kind of sequel: ‘The Compassion Protocol’. Barcelona, nice! It’s going to be hot there, duh, I hope you can sort out the blood test in time. Me too: I’m so, so sad about Shelley Duvall. I adore her. ‘Three Women’ is greatness. She’s incredible in everything. I met he once. She gave me her autograph. I was speechless in awe around her, and she was so completely amazing and wacky and sweet to me. ** Sarah, Hi, Sarah. Good Iowa-derived books/writers? I’d have to think about that. I’m sure there must be some. I have a couple of friends who are in the Workshop right now. They say they have to fight to write anything out of the ordinary. I think I must’ve really liked the idea of confusing and amazing people by doing magic tricks because I still kind of have that same aspiration with my writing. ** PL, Hi, P. I’m alright, thanks. The Britney thing made for a good story to tell, but it’s too long for the p.s. Exciting about the Salome short. Bated breath over here. There have been slaves in the posts who were Black, but they’re rare because, at least in my searching, self-identified slaves who are Black are quite rare on those sites. The vast majority of the members of those sites who are Black identify as masters. And the rare Black slaves’s profile texts are almost inevitably racist-bating in a way that I find uninteresting and uncomfortable. So that probably explains it? All’s okay here. Make Friday count. ** Cletus, Thanks a lot, pal. ** nat, Hi, nat! I do tend to urge people looking for books to read to give special consideration to French books. Thanks about the posts. ‘Cart Life’ actually sounds kind of exciting to weird me. I’ll look into it. I should subscribe to a magic magazine! I didn’t realise they still exist. I used to subscribe to two ‘haunted house attraction builders’ magazines but they petered out. Nothing wrong with pulpy. Pulpy can facilitate greatness. And if it causes you to create super juicy characters, what more encouragement do you need, haha. But seriously. Norway did seem photo-defiant. Our photos were puny looking too. I would pursue ‘Zenless Zone Zero’ but the gambling aspect is too dangerous. I have to watch my pennies. Cool, see you on Monday too, then. ** Oscar 🌀, Hey. Oh, yes, yes, that shirt! Convince not to have one made and wear it everywhere. Please convince me. I beg you. Do you know what a sigil is? Well, I asked a sigil making app to built you a special sigil made out of a secret message that you can only absorb into your consciousness by staring at the sigil lengthily and fixedly. Tha’s how sigils work. So, start staring in 3 … 2 … 1 … Go! You’re moving in with your boyfriend! Very cool! Love is the best! And I’m sure that continual proximity won’t harm yours. I’m still waiting to hear Zac’s thoughts on the script. Hopefully today. One should only eat Krispy Kreme donuts when they’re fresh from the oven, so don’t eat the supermarket ones, only eat ones at Krispy Kreme outlets that cook their donutts on premises. Happy Friday to you too!! ** Right. If you don’t like or feel any inclination to like Felicien Rops, you’re not going to have much fun in my galerie today. See you tomorrow.