Joueuses de cartes (Card Players), 2003

It was entirely unsurprising that the self-declared iconoclast and bon viveur Eric Provoost would turn to sexual and erotic imagery at some point in his artistic journey, and that point appears to have come around the turn of the millennium. Whether it was a mid-life crisis or a turn of century that prompted the shift is uncertain, but by 2006 he was exhibiting in venues including the Musée de l’Erotisme in Paris and the Museo d’Arte Erotica in Venice.

Alphabet d’elles (Alphabet of Women) is one of two alphabets created by Provoost in the 2000s; the other, artfully composed of sexual parts with leather accoutrements, is decidedly kinky.