To say that Pierre Molinier (1900-76) was a leg fetishist would be putting it mildly. The Frenchman was a leg obsessive; a leg idoliser and worshipper who turned his mania into some of the most exultantly libidinous artworks you’re ever likely to see. In dozens of small, monochrome photographs, his obsession is manifested time and again – from legs of women or female mannequins dressed in stockings and suspenders, to his own nylon-clad legs or those of other men who shared his transvestitism. Then come countless writhing thighs and figures bending over in scenes of posterior-fixated debauchery. One astonishing self-portrait, entitled ‘Mon Cul’ (‘My Arse’), is a picture of just that: the artist naked on his back, his legs strapped behind his head and buttocks spread towards you, as he fingers his anus while simultaneously and rather acrobatically fellating himself.
There are plenty of other, less confrontational images, mainly involving sexy women and bondage themes, all made between the 1950s and Molinier’s suicide in 1976. Yet little of it actually feels erotic. It seems too indulgent, too much an expression of his particular pleasures – and sometimes too desperate to appear shocking or transgressive. Not that there’s any actual intercourse: just a lot of posing against boudoir backdrops, and the occasional insertion of objects into various orifices.
The best pieces use photomontage techniques to suggest an atmosphere of magic and mutation. One photograph, with its orgiastic cluster of raven-haired beauties, initially resembles a cross between 1970s trash horror flick ‘Vampyros Lesbos’ and the cover of The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s ‘Electric Ladyland’ album – until you realise there are more legs than could possibly fit the number of torsos. Such multi-limbed confabulations are joined by a few drawings and paintings, depicting a sort of demonic pandemonium of pleasure. No wonder Surrealism founder André Breton so enthusiastically adopted Molinier in the 1950s, viewing him as a fellow-traveller, an explorer of humanity's darkest desires.
Gabriel Coxhead