Poetry New York

Gustave Courbet’s:

The Origin of the World

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Origin-of-the-World.jpg

It was called “The last word on Realism” by Maxime Du Camp when the green velvet curtain that veiled the painting like a pair of panties was pulled back revealing The Origin of the World to its small audience. (This was not meant as a compliment).  Its owner was the proud Khalil-Bey, a collector of other “infamous” works of eroticism which included The Turkish Bath and another of Courbet’s, The Sleepers.  Today it hangs in an exhibit at the Metropolita Museum of Art, not behind a green curtain, but around the corner from a sign that warns you about the graphic nudity ahead.  I guess they still think this painting has the ability to shock, though most people just glanced at it and snickered. It is, after all, a painting of a big, hairy cunt.  

In my opinion, its also the most beautiful painting I’ve ever seen (beside the point).  Courbet claimed that he “never lied” in his paintings.  This was in 1866, when he was known as the most arrogant man in France, and Manet had already had The Luncheon on the Grass rejected from the Paris Salon three years earlier (after which he embarked on Olympia, a nude the Salon would display). The uncomfortable eroticism of The Origin.. comes from Courbet’s refusal to romanticize the woman’s body in the style of the Greek Goddess, which at the time was the only acceptable way to paint eroticism, you could even get away with pornography. (i.e. Lena and the Swan).  But here you see the woman’s body as it really is; “vaguely obese” was one man’s description. 

It could not be shown in any of the Salons at the time, but there were rumors among folk that Courbet, the man who turned down the Legion of Honor but claimed he would revitalize French painting, had, for a large amount of money, painted something utterly immoral, sacrificing all dignity for a few bucks.  In the painter’s own words he compared himself with Titian and Veronese.  But until the late 1980’s the painting has passed from private collector to private collector, each mainting the clandestine ritual of its unveiling, albiet with some difference in methods of concealment, that kept it sacred to a handful of initiates and out of the public mind. When the Musee d’Orsay displayed it in a gilt frame restored to the ranks of other Courbet nudes, it took on a dismal signficance.  The ritual of delight surrounding this painting has ended so now it can be scoffed at by museum patrons in passing.  It is no longer the titilating secret of a small circle of men whose passion for perversion funded these works of art and protected them throughout the years.