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For the surrealists the eighteenth-century aristocrat the
Marquis de Sade was the ultimate literary rebel. In his lifetime
de Sade had been imprisoned for his sexual activities. One
hundred years after his death, his books were still regarded
as scandalous and banned in France. He remained, in the admiring
words of André Breton, one of the 'great undesirables',
a champion of sexual and political liberty.
A number of surrealist writers produced their own erotic
texts, often accompanied by drawings by their artist friends.
Sometimes overtly pornographic, they were published in small
editions and often anonymously to avoid censorship and prosecution.
The surrealists also conducted surveys and held group discussions
about sexual habits in an attempt to understand the nature
of eroticism and what it revealed about human nature.
Eroticism was the theme of a major surrealist exhibition
held in 1959. Designed by Breton and Marcel Duchamp, it was
arranged as a journey through a series of feminine spaces.
Visitors entered the gallery through a 'love grotto', a dark
cavernous tunnel that led to a rose-coloured chamber where
the ceiling seemed to breathe in and out. The recording of
women's orgasmic sighs, made specially for that exhibition
and not heard publicly since, is played in this space.
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