Everyone knows what sadism is, but nobody chooses to read De Sade. Nor must they, as we have now taken the collected graphics from 4000 book pages, and put them together without the text. Marquis De Sade has shocked for generations, was sentenced to death, his books were censored, artists, authors as well as psychologists have dealt with his work. De Sade writings became the symbol of the forbidden worldwide – the personified perversion. In France at the end of the eighteenth century, Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, hired an artist to illustrate his collected writings. This edition, published in 1797, contained 101 copper engravings with sex scenes, most of them of a sadomasochistic leaning. At the time, such “cochonneries” (obscenities) brought one directly into a dungeon. For this reason, most artists in the erotic genre remained anonymous, something which makes it difficult today to ascribe authorship.
The Marquis de Sade, born in Paris in 1740, a rel
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