Abstract

Following the Second World War, Montréal earned a reputation as a North American hotbed of eroticism due to its red-light district, nightclub scene, and pornography industry. Although this erotic environment had a significant presence in the art and media of the period, the topic has been neglected by scholars. The Pornographic Delicatessen: Midcentury Montréal’s Erotic Art, Media, and Spaces offers an important examination of the development of erotic art and design in the city’s postwar and Quiet Revolution era.

Matthew Purvis surveys a range of erotic materials to rediscover nearly forgotten artworks in a period that expanded definitions of what could be considered art. He stresses the confluence of visual art, film, magazines, and journalism during the period, as formal models passed from surrealism and automatism into the evolution of a Quebec-specific variation of pop art, ti-pop.

A deeply researched work, The Pornographic Delicatessen shows how eroticism was central to marginal art as well as how aspects of it were adapted and assimilated into the expanding field of institutionalized art being constructed through state intervention.