Security guards responded well, they closed the room and asked her to get dressed.
it should have been: "Security guards responded well, they closed the room and burnt the offending image."
Nude tribute to Manet's Olympia ends in cuffing
A Luxembourg performance artist earned herself a cuffing over the weekend after she stripped off in front of Edouard Manet's Olympia at Paris's Musée d'Orsay. Deborah de Robertis treated art lovers visiting Splendour and Misery: Images of Prostitution 1850-1910 to a recreation of the celebrated work's reclining nude. The …
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Monday 18th January 2016 17:05 GMT Simon Harris
Ooooh, Mrs Slocombe...
Article 15, paragraph 15 of their regulations states that only guide dogs and assistance dogs are allowed in the Musée.
She was probably all right stripping off to emulate the painting, but went too far when she got out her pussy*.
* the one at the right hand side of the picture, of course!
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Monday 18th January 2016 18:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Unsure about this one
I have no objection to nudity, if that's what people want to do. But rather often nowadays "performance artist" = "young woman who gets her kit off in public". I want fame, I haven't actually got anything very original to say, let's go somewhere where tourists collect and undress.
The museum, however, does seem to be run by hypocrites. Or perhaps they have very strict rules, and you're only allowed to call it performance art after she has had her attrributes carefully inspected by a group of Académiciens and been certified as being of suitable artistic merit. And, as it's a museum, then being safely dead.
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Monday 18th January 2016 20:41 GMT Grikath
Re: Unsure about this one
Given that the "artist" could have gotten permission to make and film her "artistic statement" outside of public hours, at the convenience of the museum and herself, the way she chose to act in this matter indicates, at least to me, a significant amount of deliberate attention whoring.
The latter may be part of "the Arts", but tends generally to not involve dropping ones' undies in front of the Public. Even in France..
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Monday 18th January 2016 21:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Unsure about this one
"Given that the "artist" could have gotten permission to make and film her "artistic statement" outside of public hours"
Ah, but in performance art the audience reaction is part of the performance.
I hope for her sake she's got them (and the guards) to sign model releases, otherwise if she makes any money out of this there could be a copyright case.
Madame, I am not a museum guard, I am a performance artist playing a museum guard. My performance is copyright.
...though now I recollect I've been beaten to it by the New Yorker cartoon in which the lady of negotiable affection tells the policeman "I'm a performance artist - I just set up random sexual encounters with strangers".
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Tuesday 19th January 2016 00:08 GMT Grikath
Re: Unsure about this one
"Ah, but in performance art the audience reaction is part of the performance."
Yes. For which you have two options: you do it in "the public space" , in other words: outside. Or people , for whatever reason, pay to enter a non-public area to witness the spectacle.
In this case the (ahem..) "artiste" "performed" unwarranted in a non-public space, to whit, a museum which charges admission for its own purposes of education and entertainment. What she did amounts to Hijacking the Stage, which tends to be frowned upon by organisors and public alike, regardless of any merit of the "performance".
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Monday 18th January 2016 22:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Well.
Van Gogh has one of the crappiest websites on the Internets. The UI hurts the brain; perhaps it makes you feel like he did.
Goya, on the other hand...
The original of Olympia is Goya's La Maya Desnuda - perhaps this young lady will try the same thing in Madrid and we can compare the relative enlightenment of the Spanish and French capitals.
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Monday 18th January 2016 23:43 GMT x 7
Every time I see that painting it looks crappier and crappier.
other than the fact it shows a nude (and I understand the model was a famous prossy) its really got nothing going for it. Artistically its poor. Theres more realism and quality in an episode from "The Beano" than there is in that painting. Look at the black cat - looks more like an evil mutant witches pussy.
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Tuesday 19th January 2016 12:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Every time I see that painting it looks crappier and crappier.
@x 7- I'm not being rude or superior, I hope, but do you mean the original or a reproduction? The original is rather impressive. (It is also not far short of two metres long and nearly lifesize.)
"Artistically its poor. Theres more realism and quality"
Well, that may be the problem if you equate art with realism. We have cameras for that. Manet is going for a kind of realism all right, but it isn't photographic realism - it is social realism. There is a lot to interpret and understand in the picture, and I won't attempt to gloss it because there are plenty of sources on line.
Reproducing familiar things with oil paint (which is not good at fine detail) is a great skill, like those cartoonists who can summon up a scene with just a few lines.
"and I understand the model was a famous prossy"
You understand wrong. She was both an artist's model and a successful painter in her own right.
" looks more like an evil mutant witches pussy"
I think Manet would have been quite flattered by that comment. If you understand the ancestors of the picture - Titian's Venus of Urbino and Goya's La Maya Desnuda for just two - you will see that the cat is part of the symbolism.
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Tuesday 19th January 2016 12:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
How could those pictures be controversial in the 19th century?
Well, Goya's La Maya Desnuda got him the attention of the Spanish Inquisition.
Titian's Venus was an idealised nude goddess; generally speaking there isn't an erotic charge in earlier nudes. Cranach's Eve is just a woman with no clothes on. La Maya Desnuda was partly shocking because there are two paintings - one with her clothes on and the other with them off, which emphasises that this is a real woman and one who might, as it were, get undressed and await a visitor.
Olympia faces its audience with a truth many of them did not want to think about - Olympia is a prostitute waiting for a client. What's more, she is not submissive; there's no sign of a pimp. Her gaze is quite confrontational; what do you think you're looking at? The viewer has obviously just entered the room because she has turned away from the servant showing her the flowers, has put her hand on her groin, and the cat is standing up and also looking at the visitor. Perhaps the client has arrived early.
In the mid-19th century people knew such things existed but didn't want them publicised - especially as many of the men who would see the painting probably wouldn't relish enquiries from their wives as to whether they had ever visited prostitutes. Unerotic nudes in a classical antiquity that never existed were OK, being confronted with an independent minded naughty lady in a contemporary setting was a bit much.
The French establishment of those days, however, recognised genuine originality and I believe the picture was purchased for the nation during the 1890s.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
