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<\/div>\nFive works had been sprayed with the words “MeToo” and one was stolen<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Paris: <\/b><\/p>\n
A top French museum has filed a police complaint after two women spray-painted a famous 19th-century painting by Gustave Courbet which it had loaned to another gallery, official said Friday.<\/p>\n
The women have been charged with spraying the words “MeToo” on “The Origin of the World”, a nude painted by French artist Courbet, and four other works.<\/p>\n
The 1866 painting was on loan from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris to the Pompidou-Metz in the northeastern city of Metz. It was protected by a glass pane on which the words were scrawled.<\/p>\n
“Stained with red paint, the work was taken down for examination by a qualified restorer. The frame has received numerous splashes of paint that could have lasting marks even after restoration,” the Musee d’Orsay said in a statement, adding that it had “filed a complaint”.<\/p>\n
The museum said the painting would not return to the Metz exhibition that closes in May.<\/p>\n
Metz prosecutor Yves Badorc said five works had been sprayed with the words “MeToo” and one was stolen.<\/p>\n
French-Luxembourg performance artist Deborah de Robertis told AFP she organised the operation carried out by two other people, as part of a performance titled: “You Don’t Separate the Woman from the Artist”.<\/p>\n
In a video sent to AFP by de Robertis, one woman tagged Courbet’s work with red paint and then a second sprays another. They then chant “MeToo” before being dragged away by security guards.<\/p>\n
In an open letter, de Robertis denounced the behaviour of six men in the art world, describing them as “predators” and “censors”.<\/p>\n
De Robertis said they had also seized an embroidery work by French artist Annette Messager as “reappropriation”.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor said a third person — who was not arrested — could have been behind the disappearance of the 1991 Messager work titled “I Think Therefore I Suck”.<\/p>\n
De Robertis has a work on display at the venue in Metz — a photograph of a 2014 performance at the Musee d’Orsay in which she posed naked underneath Courbet’s painting.<\/p>\n
A French court in 2020 ordered de Robertis to pay a 2,000-euro ($2,150) fine for appearing naked in 2018 in Lourdes in southwest France, a Catholic pilgrimage site for those who believe the Virgin Mary appeared there.<\/p>\n
She has also shown herself naked in front of the “Mona Lisa” painting at the Louvre in Paris.<\/p>\n
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n