Tuesday, May 07, 2024

About Courbet (yet again)

And so we come back to Courbet’s 1866 picture The Origin of the World (see here) and more specifically the passions it arouses in Luxembourg’s finest provocateuse Deborah de Robertis (see here) who has adorned the painting (or more specifically the glass protecting it) with a #MeToo tag “because women are the origin of the world”. Which is a bit like complaining about Van Gogh’s Sunflowers because it’s called Sunflowers but, hey, it all adds to the sum of human joy, doesn’t it?

Except that then the French culture minister Rachida Dati weighs in with an intriguing contribution: “An artwork is not a poster to colour in with the day’s message.” Which may or may not be true but at least it suggests that Ms Dati has thought about the subject. And I remember that not so long ago my own country’s government gave the equivalent role to the ludicrous Nadine Dorries and not for the first time a bit of me wishes I were French.

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