Bernard Montorgueil (c. 1920)An early Master of the then rare example of men being enslaved by hauty women who, while not wrestlers, or giants or nasty women, but elegant women who rule absolutely. Here, virility succumbs to gentleness, and humiliation in a way rendered sensual through gracefulness rather than violence.. Bernard Montorgueil's work is the most refined representation of male masochism, if indeed it is not the only one to adopt such an approach.
Bernard Montorgueil is draped in discretion. His work first circulated underground in the 50s, as four series of drawings together with four texts, originally hand written. For this edition of Les Quatre Jeudis suivi de Barbara as for that of Dressage suivi de Une Brune Piquante, the original plates have been specially retouched in color, in accordance with the long tradition of libertine illustration, by May.
This utterly demanding collection of thematic volumes approaches the great libertine illustrators "going back in time". These illustrations have the seduction of extincted things, the tender and obsolete charm of the beginning of the century.
Just as American illustrators were to perturb the world of comics, in a proliferating inversion like a cancer, vigorous and infinitly variable, so Bernard Montorgueil violates the rose water illustrations of romantic novels set in bourgeois apartments whose decor he faithfully reproduces.
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