In a performance artist stunt, two women spray-painted the words “MeToo” on a 19th-century painting of a woman’s vagina by French artist Gustave Courbet, a museum and the artist announced.
The nude painting “The Origin of the World,” painted in 1866, was protected by a “glass plate,” and when police entered the scene to investigate the damage, the Center Pompidou in the northeastern city of Metz was discovered. he told AFP on Monday.
The painting was previously on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to the Center Pompidou-Metz as part of an exhibition centered around French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who previously owned the painting.
Metz prosecutor Yves Badruk announced the arrest of two women born in 1986 and 1993 for spray-painting the word “MeToo” on a total of five works, including Courbet’s nudes.
He said a third person, who was not in custody, appeared to have stolen another piece of art.
The stolen piece is a white piece with red embroidery by French artist Annette Messager called “I Think Because I Suck.”
Deborah de Robertis, a French-Luxembourgish performance artist, told AFP that two others had organized the red spray paint as part of a performance titled “Don’t separate women and artists.” Told.
In the video De Robertis sent to AFP, a woman tags Courbet’s famous painting with red paint, then another.
They then chanted “Me Too” and were dragged away by security.
De Robertis explained that she wanted to “challenge the history of art” by tagging the famous painting with “MeToo,” especially since “women are the origin of the world.”
In an open letter, De Robertis condemned the actions of six men in the art world, describing them as “predators” and “censors”.
She said the act was a feminist performance and was done because “the very insular contemporary art world has remained largely silent until now.”
The artist said he also targeted another work by Austrian artist Valier Export.
Ms. de Robertis already had a piece on display at the venue – a photo from a 2014 performance at the Musée d’Orsay in which she posed with her vagina exposed under a painting by Courbet.
Culture Minister Rashida Dati wrote about X: “To the ‘activists’ who think that art alone is not powerful enough to get their message across…artwork is not a poster that embellishes the message of the day.”
Francois Grodidier, the mayor of Metz, condemned what he described as “another attack on culture, this time by fanatical feminists.”
According to the Musée d’Orsay, Courbet’s nude body was first owned by a Turkish-Egyptian diplomat named Khalil Bey. He was a flamboyant figure in 1860s Paris who amassed an art collection celebrating the female body before gambling debts ruined him.
It belonged to Lacan before entering the museum’s collection in 1995.
In 2020, a French court sentenced Mr. de Robertis to pay a 2,000 euro ($2,150) fine for appearing naked in front of a cave in the southwestern French town of Lourdes. The cave is a Catholic pilgrimage site for those who believe that the Virgin Mary appeared there. .
The case against her was dropped in 2017 after she displayed her genitals in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum in the French capital.
