The painting “The Origin of the World” (1866), by Gustave Courbet, was stained with red paint on Monday afternoon (6), 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 said.
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.
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.
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 Pompidou-Metz Center dedicated to psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.
Deborah de Robertis was sentenced in 2020 in France to a fine of 2 thousand euros (10.9 thousand reais), for having been naked in 2018 in front of the grotto of the Sanctuary of Lourdes. She has been released on several occasions following similar actions, most notably in 2017 when she stripped naked on Louvre Museum, in Paris, in front of the “Mona Lisa” painting.
