Pierre Molinier—born in 1900 in Agen, France—was a painter who used art as a form of self stimulation. If that sounds sexual, it was. “In painting,” he said, “I was able to satisfy my leg and nipple fetishism.” Living and working in Bordeaux, Molinier started out painting real landscapes, but as he began to experiment with photography and to ally himself with Surrealism, the landscapes became bodyscapes of intertwined limbs. Both gay and a transvestite, Molinier increasingly became his own subject in photographs that were entirely erotic and transgressive. He died in 1976, in a suicide that was itself an artful act. This Maison D’Art exhibition of 11 paintings is a rare event: the first showing of Molinier’s paintings in the U.S. —L.J.