‘He paints phalluses the way others paint landscapes’: the disturbing genius of erotica pioneer Félicien Rops

A new exhibition at Kunsthaus Zurich revisits the Belgian artist whose wild women of the demimonde scandalised the belle epoque – and still shock audiences today During an oppressively hot week in Paris in 1878, the bohemian Belgian artist Félicien Rops painted a picture of a woman walking her pet pig. In it, the woman is blindfolded and naked – bar some stockings, long black gloves and a jaunty feathered hat – and the pig has a cute, pink curlicue of a tail. Pornocrates – which roughly trans...

By Christian House