THE PORNOGRAPHIC DELICATESSEN
The Pornographic Delicatessen
Midcentury Montréal's Erotic Art, Media, and Spaces
MATTHEW PURVIS
440 pages | 41 b&w illus., 18 colour illus. | 6 x 9
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.
“Matthew Purvis’s The Pornographic Delicatessen presents an enthusiastic and fascinating approach to Quebec media and artistic phenomena, inviting new readers to discover a wealth of cultural richness and participate in a renewed collective reflection.”
–Adrien Rannaud, University of Toronto
“This volume is a weighty, interdisciplinary contribution to Quebec studies and North American art history. Matthew Purvis is to be commended for providing bountiful previously untranslated documentation of his subject and highlighting important francophone artists and writers who have been ignored by anglophone scholarship.”
–Thomas Waugh, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Film Studies and Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality, Concordia University
The e-book version of this publication will be available in Winter 2026.
Acknowledgements ix
List of Images xi
Introduction: The Erotic Environment of Montréal 3
1 Eros, Automatism, and Black Humour 37
2 New People: Post-Automatist Primitivism, Dance, and Architecture 65
3 Montréal as Medium 91
4 A Pornographic Delicatessen: The Logic of Montréal’s Erotic Press 119
5 Remediation, Erotic Artists’ Books, and the Work of Serge Lemonde 157
6 Figuration in Four Artists After Pop, Figuration Narrative, and Nouveau Réalisme 179
7 The Kétaine and Erotic Sarcasm: On the Sacred Logic of Ti-pop 203
8 Sacred Monsters and Media Black Comedy: Tabloid Sex Symbols and the Surrealism of the October Crisis 239
9 The Stakes of Eroticism in Nationalism and Women’s Art 271
Conclusion 305
Notes 321
Index 393
