Metz, France | AFP – The painting The origin of the world (1866), by Gustave Courbetwas stained with red paint on the afternoon of this Monday, 6th, at the Center Pompidou-Metz, reported the French artistic institution, to which the Orsay Museum lent the work.
The painting, which represents the female sex, was protected by glass, the museum informed AFP.
The Franco-Luxembourg artist Deborah de Robertis was mainly responsible for the action, called “You can’t separate the woman from the artist”. She wanted to join a “worldwide movement of young women artists from all disciplines,” said the lawyer for one of the protest participants.
The Pompidou-Metz Center in France, where ‘The Origin of the World’ is exhibited. Photograph: Bogdan Lazar – stock.adobe.com
Five works were marked with the phrase “MeToo”, according to the Center Pompidou-Metz. “With due respect to feminist movements, we are shocked by the vandalism involving works by artists, especially feminist artists, who are at the heart of struggles in art history,” said museum director Chiara Parisi.
Deborah De Robertis explained that she wanted to “challenge art history” by writing “MeToo” on Coubert’s famous painting, “because women are the origin of the world.”
Two young women with no criminal record were arrested this afternoon, Metz prosecutor Yves Badorc said. A third person, who has not been arrested, may be behind the theft of another work, he added.
Painting ‘The Origin of the World’ is stained with paint. Photograph: Jean-Christophe Verhaegen / AFP
A work by Deborah de Robertis entitled Mirror of the Origin of the World is on display near Coubert’s painting, within an exhibition at the Center Pompidou-Metz dedicated to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
Deborah de Robertis was sentenced in 2020 in France to a fine of €2,000 (R$10,900) for being naked in 2018 in front of the grotto of the Sanctuary of Lourdes. She was released on several occasions after similar actions, most notably in 2017, when she stood naked in the Louvre Museum, in Paris, in front of the painting. Mona Lisa.
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