“Sade is surrealist in sadism.” —André Breton
The legacy of the Marquis de Sade can be felt strongly in the 20th century, largely because of the efforts of the French Surrealists in the ‘20s and ‘30s: writers and artists like Guillaume Apollinaire, André Breton, and Georges Bataille, among many others. For the Surrealists, Sade was seen as a revolutionary, a figure who tread new ground in literary form and daring, but also a radical champion of personal freedom, sexuality, and transgression. In Surrealism, History and Revolution, Simon Baker writes, “The alternative construction of Sade as a revolutionary hero began with the earliest twentieth-century accounts of his life and work, but it can be summed up by Paul Eduard’s 1926 essay title, ‘D.A.F. de Sade, fantastic and revolutionary writer.’”
Baker continued, “Between the texts in which first Apollinaire and later Breton, Eluard, and Bataille tied Sade to his revolutionary destiny, there were always attempts to represent him visually. […] The most notable significant early twentieth century images, however, are the imaginary portraits produced by Man Ray from 1936 onwards, which take the principle of the archive as portrait to produce Sade from the perspective of surrealism.” The Philadelphia-born Man Ray (née Emmanuel Radnitzky) was an integral member of this group and spent much of his life in France; his drawings, prints, and photographs inspired by Sade are some of the most striking visual reminders of the 18th century writer’s impact on the Surrealists.
In 1933, for Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution (Surrealism in the service of the revolution), Man Ray created Monument à D.A.F. de Sade (Monument to D.A.F. de Sade) after viewing the original manuscript of Sade’s Les 120 Journées de Sodome ou l’école du libertinage (The 120 Days of Sodom, or the School of Libertinage):
While this is obviously not a portrait of Sade, to which Man Ray would later turn his attention, it captures the philosophical spirit of Les 120 Journées de Sodome: explicit sexuality, 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 po