96 Years of sodom: Benjamin Ivry on Pierre Klossowski - Passages - Obituary

ArtForum, Nov, 2001 by Benjamin Ivry

Klossowski was praised in Le Monde's obit for his "universe in which theological speculation met eroticism with a strong Sadeian and pederastic element, but without any vulgarity at all." One way Klossowski avoided vulgarity--what Parisian praise, "sadistic, but never vulgar!"--was by maintaining a highly critical stance toward his "fellow human being" Sade, skewering readers who, he claimed, "do not realize that Sade escapes them as soon as they take him at his word, whereas they do not escape from Sade: they become his characters, more or less successfully." He offered precise analytical descriptions of Sade's erotic world, observing that Sade's ideal "androgyne" is in fact not a "man-woman," as the word's etymology implies, but rather a "woman-man," or "gyne-andro," a female with male sexual appendages. This kind of hair-splitting, just the sort of thing brainy French readers enjoy, demonstrates his preferred stance as rational observer at the orgy.

In 1965, Klossowski's last novel, Le Baphomet, appeared. When this convoluted medieval fantasy, in which a Grand Master (the Baphomet of the title) abuses an androgynous adolescent in a series of stiffly described tableaux, won a French critics' prize, the distinguished essayist Roger Caillois resigned from the jury in protest, citing the book's "shoddy elegance" and incorrect language. Among Le Baphomet's flaws is its overt theatricality; the author described writing it "as if I were describing a play that I was watching." Still, this self-consciously visual inspiration attracted admirers like French filmmakers Pierre Zucca and Raul Ruiz, who made movies inspired by the character Roberte; Klossowski himself appeared on-screen in Robert Bresson's 1966 film Au hasard Balthazar. His diminutive, emaciated figure strongly contrasted with his mighty Sadeian statements, as French documentary filmmaker Alain Fleischer, who directed four short films starring Klossowski, observed in the French daily Liberation: "In on e film I made about him, Pierre Klossowski said, 'I am an ogre.' He sometimes made pronouncements like that, but he may as well have said, 'I'm a firefighter.' He was a very fragile little gentleman, nothing like an ogre, and we celebrated his ninety-fourth birthday together. The interview had no relation to his real character."

After 1970, Klossowski focused almost entirely on visual art, with which he had only experimented before, creating visual equivalents for passages like the following from Roberte ce soir: "to dodge the blow that landed on his neck, the Hunchback burrowed his face between Roberte's thighs, and continues speaking with his nose rubbing against the Lady Inspector's underpants.... At the very first bite, Roberte lets the whip drop, as her breast falls out of her torn blouse, starting with a pink nipple popping through a black silk screen." His artworks were popular with dealers, especially in Spain and Italy, giving him a certain fame that his books had not previously enjoyed. As arch-literary, hieratical, and theatrical as his literary works, the drawings also had a certain ironic remove. In his subjects' sexual poses, Klossowski may be reminiscent of Balthus's erotic world. The brothers are both easily typed as pictorial voyeurs, but posterity may rate Klossowski more highly, because he pursued his manias in var ied and productive ways, proving that intellectual adventurousness can keep monomania from being monotonous. Whereas Balthus, after being briefly invigorated by Surrealism, produced forty years of drearily repetitive canvases, Klossowski--if perhaps with less craft--dispersed his energies in liberated investigations into how language can be made visible.