September 18, 2003
Pierre Klossowski
This is a development of this post on Balthus. As mentioned there the brother of Balthus is Pierre Klossowski, who had an interest as a writer and intellectual in the writings of de Sade and Nietzsche.
This interest is translated in his paintings. I have found few Klossowski images on the net.
The art historians say that Klossowski's paintings depict a "perverse" eroticism between men and women (sometimes accompanied by geese) in a style that parodies eighteenth-century French classicism devoted to pastoral and rural delights.
The images are at once humorous, mysterious, provocative, and simply odd. From what I am able to gather Klossowski interprets Sade's work to be using the moral and rational language of the Enlightenment not only to annihilate the moral categories of Christianity but to undermine the assumptions of Enlightenment materialism as well.
Here are some drawings some reissued novels and some connections to film