, blasphemy, and an implied preoccupation with anal sex. This simple, elegant image—a photograph of a woman’s ass framed by an upside-down cross—would go on to appear in slightly different versions, such as this below version which I believe is from 1935, and would later be used as a cover for a print edition of Sade’s novel.
This was also not Man Ray’s final word on Sade. Later in the ’30s, he began to work on sketches that would turn into a painting, an imaginary portrait of the great writer. During the ‘30s, Man Ray was obviously preoccupied with Sade, along with his fellow Surrealists, partly as a symbol for the intersection between sex, violence, radical politics, and intellectualism. In Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism and Social Dissent, David Bate writes that Man Ray visited Sade’s ancestral chateau with a number of the other Surrealists, and was regularly exposed to Sade’s then little-read work thanks to a colleague and neighbor. “Man Ray lived next to Maurice Heine (in rue Campagne-Première, Montparnasse), who for fifteen years had been sifting and piecing together parts of Sade’s manuscripts from libraries and museums in Europe. In was due to Heine that numerous texts by Sade were published between 1926 and 1935.”
Man Ray’s various portraits of Sade, culminating in a 1938 painting titled Portrait imaginaire de D.A.F. de Sade (Imaginary Portrait of the Marquis de Sade), depicts the looming face of a mature, fleshy Sade, whose visage is somewhat monstrous, even grotesque. His revolutionary aspect is emphasized by the burning Bastille in the background, and a small painted inscription at the bottom, a quote from Sade, which reads: “Afin que les traces de ma tombe disparaissent du dessus de la surface de la terre comme je me flatte que ma mémoire s’effacera de l’esprit des hommes.“ (Roughly translated: “So that the traces of my tomb disappear from above the surface of the earth as I flatter myself that my memory will fade from the spirit of the men.”)
Man Ray said, “I made an imaginary portrait. I looked at some portraits for the anatomical details, and I did this portrait. First some sketches in ink, and finally the oil painting, and at the bottom of this painting I put the last sentence of his testament, which is great, by the way. […] Sade was initially afraid of being buried alive: his body would have to stay forty-eight hours before being buried.”
Man Ray explained that the coloring in the painting is meant to connect Sade inextricably with the Bastille and with the foundation of Paris itself, as if he is part of the fabric of the city that birthed Surrealism. He says, “It is gray because I painted it like the stones of the Bastille! Because after the Bastille was dismantled, a pile of things was built with its stones, in Paris, several bridges, several buildings. That’s why they are gray and that’s why Sade’s portrait is gray.”
Apparently this portrait came about because of a conversation with Heine, who said that it was a shame there would be no image of Sade to go along with the new annotated publication he had worked so long to prepare. Man Ray said, “Heine told me, ‘I’m going to publish unpublished manuscripts, but it’s a pity: there’s no portrait of Sade, except in the family, where there was a little pastel of him, when he was twelve, dressed like a little gentleman; it’s all that has ever been published.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll make you one.’ I knew enough, I had read a lot of articles, the archives of the police in Marseilles, and Apollinaire’s book on Sade. Apollinaire said, ‘He is the freest man.'” This portrait began as a series of equally moving, if stark, sketches, where Man Ray plays with the shape of the head and especially the depth of the eyes.
Man Ray would go on to explore his favorite Sade novel, Aline et Valcour; ou, Le Roman philosophique (1795), Sade’s most overtly political work. It’s essentially an epistolary novel that recounts the story of two lovers, but is also an adventure narrative about travels through a cannibalistic, barbaric African kingdom, which is contrast