A major French museum has filed a complaint with police after two women spray-painted a famous 19th-century portrait of Gustave Courbet that it had loaned to a gallery, an official said Friday.
They were accused of sprinkling the words “MeToo” on “The Origin of the World,” a nude painted by French artist Courbet and four other works.
The 1866 painting was loaned by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to the Pompidou-Metz in the northeastern city of Metz. It was through a glass window on which the words were scribbled.
“The paintings, stained with red paint, were dismantled to be examined by a qualified conservator. The frame has suffered paint splatters that can leave lasting lines even after restoration,” the Musée d’Orsay said in a statement, adding that it had “filed a complaint. “
The museum said the painting would return to the Metz exhibition, which will end in May.
Metz prosecutor Yves Badorc said the works had been labeled “MeToo” and that one of them had been stolen.
French-Luxembourg artist Deborah de Robertis told AFP that she had organised the operation through two other people, as part of an action entitled: “We separated the woman from the artist”.
In a video sent to AFP via De Robertis, a man paints Courbet’s paintings with red paint and then sprays another with spray. They then chant “MeToo” before being removed by security guards.
In an open letter, de Robertis denounced the actions of six men in the art world, calling them “predators” and “censors. “
De Robertis said he seized an embroidered painting by French artist Annette Messager as a “reappropriation. “
The prosecutor said a third user, who has not been arrested, could have simply been the disappearance of Messager’s 1991 paintings titled “I Think, Therefore, I’m Useless. “
De Robertis shows a painting in Metz: a photograph from a 2014 performance at the Musée d’Orsay in which she posed nude under Courbet’s painting.
In 2020, a French court fined De Robertis 2,000 euros ($2,150) for appearing naked in 2018 in Lourdes, southwestern France, a Catholic pilgrimage site for those whom the Virgin Mary represented there.
She also appeared nude in front of the painting of “Mona Lisa” in the Louvre in Paris.