pierre molinier

THE OBSCURE SELF

Long considered a deviant figure in the artistic underground, the post-Surrealist French personnage Pierre Molinier exposed the dark erotic underside of glamour inaugurated by the Surrealist movement, rooted in dreams and fetishism.

Through staged self-portraiture in his home, he photographed himself nude, wearing black stockings and high heels, and adopting glamorous feminine poses. In his transgressive photos and collages, glamour becomes a fetish, a masquerade, and an obsession — a mysterious world where desire, identity, and fantasy collapse into one another.

Working across multiple mediums — collage, painting, photomontage, photography, and screenprints — Molinier cut out body parts, removed backgrounds, and constructed fantastical scenes. Using assemblage, he wove elements into compositions governed by rhythm, repetition, and symmetry. He then retouched and re-photographed each collage to hide the seams, forming a unified image. As a final gesture, some works were glazed with semen.

Recognized by André Breton…