Pornokrates

Museums of Namur | Félicien Rops Museum | Exhibition | Guided tour

Pornokrates or La Dame au cochon (the Lady and Pig).
Aquarelle, pastels et gouache, 1878.
Félicien Rops Museum, Province of Namur.
From the Collection of the French Community of Belgium.

"My Pornocratie is complete. This drawing delights me. I would like to show you this beautiful naked girl, clad only in black shoes and gloves in silk, leather and velvet, her hair styled. Wearing a blindfold she walks on a marble stage, guided by a pig with a "golden tail" across a blue sky. Three loves - ancient loves - vanish in tears (...) I did this in four days in a room of blue satin, in an overheated appartment, full of different smells, where the opopanax and cyclamen gave me a slight fever condusive towards production or even towards reproduction" Rops to H.Liesse, January 1879

For some the pig with the golden tail represents the image of luxury and lucre steering the woman, whose only excuse is her blindness; for others, it is the image of man, bestial and stupid, kept in check by the woman. This image of the pig, as well as those of the puppet and the pierrot are shared by many of Rops' comtemporaries.

Pornokrates heralds the advent to the art world of the comtemporary woman which Rops glorified. She is characterised by her arrogance, her composure and her ruthlessness.

Bernadette Bonnier
Last modified: Fri Mar 22 12:25:45 MET 1996