Gustave Courbet’s infamous nude painting The origin of the world (The Origin of the World) was targeted over the weekend by protesters who tagged it with the words “Me too”.
The 1886 painting is on display at the Center Pompidou-Metz, in northern France, in the exhibition “Lacan, the exhibition: when art meets psychoanalysis” (until May 27), which examines the theories of the unconscious proposed by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who once possessed The origin of the world. The work was loaned by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. A spokesperson for the Center Pompidou-Metz confirmed that, including the Courbet, five works in total in the exhibition were defaced with the slogan “Me Too”. An embroidered piece by French artist Annette Messager, titled I think, therefore I’m terrible (1991), was also removed from the museum.
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Luxembourg artist Deborah De Robertis claimed responsibility for the vandalism and theft in a video posted on Vimeo, titled On ne separate pas la femme de l’artiste (“the woman cannot be separated from the artist”). In a statement, the artist said the protest aimed to expose the “misogynistic divide” in the art world. The video shows two women writing the slogan “Me too” on the paintings, popularized by the social movement of the same name that emerged in 2017 in response to a series of high-profile cases of sexual assault and harassment. Among the works marked in the museum is a photograph by De Robertis himself Origin Mirror.
In the video, protesters sing “Me Too” before being removed from the site by security staff. According to Art Journal, Metz mayor François Grosdidier called the protest “a new attack on culture, this time by fanatical feminists.” Metz police did not say whether the protesters had been charged.
This is not the first feminist protest held by De Robertis in a museum, nor even the first attack on Courbet. In 2014, she exposed her vulva in front of Origin of the World at the Musée d’Orsay, and two years later, she returned to the museum to take off her clothes – except for a portable video camera strapped around her neck – and lay down on the floor in front of Edouard Manet’s nude painting Olympia (1863). The latest protest led to a charge of public indecency and almost two days of detention in a cell.
She said in her statement: “I call on all women, with or without vulvas, all intersex, trans and non-binary people, and all underrepresented people – whether artists, assistants or interns in the art world – to dare to come forward. express. ”
