by Roy Stevenson
(05/14/08)

Paris's superb reputation for culture is well deserved. It's reflected in its art museums, the language, architecture, parks, plays and shows, and even its cemeteries. It's everywhere. Paris is also renowned as the City of Romance and love. I once saw a young couple of lovers in blue and pink dressing gowns (and not much underneath) and slippers in a café in the early morning, getting some coffee and croissants to take back to their love nest.

What about the erotic side of life in Paris? Despite a lot of public snogging in Paris, most of the loving takes place behind closed doors and windows. Enter the Museum of Erotic Art to publicly show the seamier side of sex in Paris. There's been debate for years about whether this Museum should be regarded as cultural or just another sleazy tourist trap, but somehow it combines enough art, culture, and history with pornography to give it an aura of credibility as a place of bona fide erotic art.

This museum is clearly not in the Paris Tourism Board's Top Ten Sights List, but is gaining enough of a reputation to attract 170,000 visitors each year. Interestingly enough, more women than men visit. I couldn't guess why this would be so. Most visitors, male and female, are curious tourists, couples, even people over 60. And you aren't likely to see suspicious looking characters in long black trench coats, muttering to themselves. Despite its artistic bent, the museum is not for the prudish, and definitely not a place to bring your thirteen year-old kids.

Located on the Boulevard de Clichy in Pigalle, in Paris's renowned Montmartre district, it's only a five-minute walk from the Legendary Moulin Rouge with its distinctive red windmill atop, and the Comedie de Paris. The Moulin Rouge (Red Windmill) still puts on a superb dance show, including the notorious Can-Can, with topless dancers. Many of its dancers are from Australia, but that's another story. And although this area used to be Paris's red light district (there are still a number of sex shops and strip clubs along Blvd de Clichy), there are also supermarkets, department stores, restaurants, and other respectable stores sprinkled along this busy street. It's even on the standard Tourist Bus route.

Blvd. de Clichy has a sort of sex strip atmosphere like many large cities around the world, but because it's in Paris, this feeling is diminished by the artistic cream-colored limestone architecture around you. You don't feel unsafe walking along Clichy, although don't be surprised if you're propositioned by the occasional prostitute.

The museum opened in 1997, by three friends who combined their personal erotica collections into the 2,000 objects now displayed. It took them 30 years to amass their private collections. One of them, antique dealer Alain Plumey, became the director. You'll learn more about art, anthropology, and sexual culture spanning the centuries around the world than see porno movies, and even those are historically interesting -- more on them later.

The museum is not a sordid little back alley room either. The 19th century building's narrow façade belies its true size -- seven stories high. The décor is none too shabby either -- white marble tiles, marble stairs, brass banisters, and all remnants of this former cabaret.

The artifacts and memorabilia on exhibition in the well-lit display cabinets are very diverse, and cover the artistic spectrum from tasteful to downright tacky. Erotic artwork from four continents reveal primitive erotic scenes on pottery from Peru and Greece; wooden and ceramic sculpted figures with aroused phalluses from Greece, Africa, and Nepal; masks and Aztec pottery from Mexico; erotic Kama Sutra watercolor paintings from India including lesbian action; female Tibetan and Aztec fertility idols; a Thai prayer tree of fertility worship, with twisting branches resembling penises; two gay men engaging in sex. Some of these objects date back to the 2nd century.

Japanese erotica includes ivory figurines that seem respectable until, with the use of mirrors, you see their private parts below them. Japanese wooden sandals with phalluses protruding from the soles, and a sex manual with color illustrations round out this country's contribution.

There seems to be a general anticlerical theme in one section. A metal statue of the devil masturbating gives a hint of things to come. A ceramic monk whose cloak opens up revealing an enormous, you guessed it, phallus. The irreverent series of paintings depicting what went on behind the scenes in ancient monasteries is not the sort of artwork you'll see hanging on the wall at the Vatican. Hint: monks engaged in sodomy, sex with sheep, fellatio, intercourse with the poor nuns, and god knows what else.

Another charming memento is a wooden coffin with a man inside. When the coffin lid is opened, an enormous phallus drops down from the deceased. Ceramic penis-shaped flutes. Other erotic statues, cartoons, Chinese Sex manuals and snuff -boxes decorated with sexual scenes (many quite beautiful), sexual aids, and unimaginable devices and contraptions add to the interest. And did I mention penises? Well, there are lots of them, everywhere.

Some of the exhibits will make you laugh (like the Thai betel nutcracker shaped like a female that cracks nuts between her legs); other exhibits will raise your eyebrows as you try to figure out what the artist was trying to say.

Near the entrance is a loop film of a collection of silent film shorts playing on a video screen. Directed by Michel Reilhac, these scandalous films were made between 1905 and 1930. Apparently they were used to "warm up" the patrons in the brothels as they waited for their lover. Some would still be considered shocking today -- the short film with nuns, a gardener and a dog with a preference for cunnilingus was one such. Named "Polissons and Galipettes," they became known as The Good Old Naughty Days.

You start from the bottom (of the museum) and work your way up. The first two floors are devoted to pre-Columbian, Peruvian, Etruscan, Greek and Asian fertility icons (shades of the Shanghai Museum of Ancient Sex Culture that I wrote up recently). As you go up to higher levels, the exhibits become more contemporary and depict mainly western art, including such oddments as chastity belts.

The third floor is devoted to interesting 19th century historical photographs, documents, and programs about prostitution, brothels and their courtesans in Paris. Registered by the state to operate legally in the early 19th century, they were finally banned in 1946. By 1810 there were 180 such establishments, called "maisons de tolerance," in Paris.

The more famous brothels were frequented by all manner of famous and infamous people, including the Prince of Wales and Paris's iconic painter, Toulouse-Lautrec. He painted 16 pieces for one brothel as rent payments -- all now in private collections. Other famous personalities who availed themselves of the girls' services were Charlie Chaplin and Cary Grant. One of the more renowned brothels, the Le Chabanais, had more than working girls -- it had cabaret entertainment attracting people like Humphry Bogart, Mae West, and Edith Piaf.

There is modern art on the top three floors, featuring temporary exhibits of nudes, black and white photos, erotic cartoons, and paintings by contemporary artists. The black and white photos show a comprehensive display of pornographic and titillating scenes designed for gentlemen's wallets; lesbians, a maid using her feather duster for purposes that would shock the manufacturer, sublime women in Venus-like poses, teasing semi-nudes, and others.

Creative and well-detailed paintings indicate the owners of this museum don't just let any old hack display their art here. A mock Balinese scene showing many sexual scenes amidst jungle foliage and fauna is superbly done. Others are bizarre scenes of naked women sitting on the backs of other kneeling naked women, on a black and white tile floor.

One visitor writes on a blog site about he and his friends finding a man dressed in bondage gear on the top floor. Said man was only too happy to pose for photos, even offering to do a striptease, giving new meaning to the phrase "bringing art to life." There's a gift shop downstairs that sells some rather unique items, such as coupling figurines.

Perhaps when you combine sex with art you get erotica. This museum has enough of an interesting mixture of art culture and sex to keep you entertained for an hour or two when you need a break from Paris's overwhelming architecture, museums, and noise. It's a genuine celebration of lust. The museum's brochure claims it's a unique place "devoted to erotic Art in all its forms, throughout time and different world cultures." I'd say it delivers.

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