Paris, Amsterdam, New York, Miami, Berlin, Barcelona, Copenhagen and Saint Petersburg are already home to similar enterprises. And, putting aside the issue of international competition, the Belgians themselves have long awaited such a museum.

“It was about time,” says MEM chief Guy Martens from across his desk, commanding the ground floor of the museum. “I don’t know why there wasn’t one already.”

Martens, a retired occupational therapist now embarking on a new career as patron of the arts, is no stranger to the scene. In his youth, the Antwerp native pursued studies in art history as well as medicine, and he has been collecting erotic art for more than 40 years. Indeed, all of the varied phalli and yoni, satyrs and nymphs exhibited at MEM come from his personal, and heretofore private, collection.

The decision to go public was admittedly the product of practical necessity more than civic duty. “At a certain point, I found I had too much art,” Martens laughs. “Many beautiful pieces ended up in boxes, and I couldn’t enjoy them at home anymore.”

There were other concerns as well. As writer Georges Bataille and musician Vini Reilly mused about the connection between sex and death, Martens too – a great admirer of the flesh – began to think of his own mortality and the fate of his cherished collection, should any calamity visit its steward.

So, in collaboration with artist Christian Brynaert and Emilie Dujat (proprietrix of the Galerie Libertine, located on the opposite side of the Grote Zavel), he created the Guy Martens Foundation and thus killed several birds with one stone. His collection would be protected, housed in style and shared with the public. The Museum of Erotics and Mythology was born.

From bawdy to sublime

As its name suggests, MEM presents a historical cross-section of erotica from antiquity to the present day, from West to East, and of course from the ridiculous to the sublime. At one end of that particular spectrum is a bawdy 18th-century flask, made in Flanders, in the shape of a smirking villager squatting to defecate (aptly labelled “Flacon chieur” in the museum catalogue). At the other end is the nude goddess of youth, Hebe, rendered in bronze by fin-de-siècle German sculptor Victor Seifert. Ensconced in MEM’s front window display, she radiates the serene beauty of the classical ideal. Not even the faintest whiff of the scatological here.

In-between these extremes one finds paintings, etchings, sculptures, medallions, masks, mechanical automata, watches, decorations and folk art as well as antique sex toys and curios (including a designer condom from the 19th century, which one imagines is unused, and a cast of Rasputin’s legendary member: length 30 cm).

There are sections dedicated to archaeological and ethnological pieces, bronzes and ivories. This last medium is a passion for Martens, who began his collection decades ago with ivory acquisitions.

The oldest work on display is a Babylonian tablet dating back several millennia, but Martens’ most prized piece is of comparatively recent vintage. The marble sculpture of a pagan hermaphrodite is dated 100 years BC. Nor is contemporary art neglected. The last two centuries are particularly well represented.

One won’t find the last word on human nature at the MEM, but the common thread uniting Martens’ collection, across historical and cultural peculiarities, is a reckoning with at least one salient aspect of the human experience: the libido. It might be jocular, ribald or downright creepy.

It might be profane or spiritual. If spiritual, it might be harmoniously Apollonian or ecstatically Dionysian. It might reflect the highest ideals or lowest prejudices of the artist’s cultural milieu. Yes, erotic art is just like any other kind of art. But with more breasts.

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