The performance artist of The Origin of the World performs at the Musée d'Orsay

Luxembourg performance artist Deborah de Robertis sits in front of Gustave Courbet's infamous 1866 painting "L'Origine" during a visit to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris du monde) and performed a live version of the painting live. In a video titled "Mirror of Origin," the artist wears a gold glitter skirt, opening her thighs and exposing her vagina. Museum security immediately surrounds her and leads the booing audience out of the gallery. The artist was eventually taken away by security guards. The museum and two security guards complained against the artist for exhibitionism.

“If you ignore the content, you can interpret this performance art as exhibitionism, but my performance is not the result of an impulsive act,” De Robertis told the Luxemburger Wort newspaper Said in an interview: "There is a gap in the history of art - the expression of the gaze of objects. In his realist paintings, the painter painted open legs, but the vagina was closed. He did not draw the hole, nor did It's the eyes. I'm not showing my vagina, but what's not in the painting, which is the eye of the vagina, that black hole, that invisible eye in the body, that place that symbolizes infinity, the origin within the origin. ”

Obviously, the museum’s administrators were not convinced by the artist’s art-historical explanation. "This behavior clearly violates the museum's regulations, whether it is performance art or not," said a manager of the Musée d'Orsay. "She did not submit an application to us in advance. Even if she submitted the application, we may not approve it because it may Our audience was disgusted."

Despite the museum's objections to the May 29 performance, De Robertis said she had performed "Origin of Imitation" there a month earlier and had not done so. any accident occurs.

“I came to the Musée d’Orsay about a month ago, and the photographer I brought with me took photos of my posture, but it didn’t attract any attention at the time,” she told Le Monde ) said, "My behavior was very natural, so even though there were security guards around, they didn't say anything. They saw my behavior, but it wasn't shocking. I always use my female sensitivity to To express something very pure."

"Origin of Imitation" is the latest and most famous in a series of similar performance art performances by De Robertis in major art institutions. Performed at the Casino Forum of Contemporary Art and the Luxembourg Museum of Modern Art (MUDAM).

This is not the first time that the Musée d'Orsay has encountered a similar situation. Last fall, a 26-year-old art student stripped naked for the museum's "Masculin/Masculin" nude art exhibition. There was a much lower-level incident before that - in January 2012 the museum was transformed into the backdrop for a lingerie ad, which featured three lingerie models running wildly through the gallery.