Sade: Attaquer le soleil

The Musée d'Orsay made headlines with its promotional video for this exhibition, but unfortunately the reality is nowhere near as stimulating. There's an enormous amount of material on show, but a lack of original interpretation or unifying narrative can leave visitors overwhelmed and frustrated. Still, there's lots of good stuff to see, even if its connection to Sade isn't always made explicit – everything from Duchamp sculptures to Man Ray photos, erotic paintings by Courbet or anonymous pornographic illustrations of libertine Romans. But in the end, the 'scandal' of the video and its exhibiton seem rather flat compared to those surrounding the life of the radical, amoral and inhuman author of '120 Days of Sodom'.