Gustave Courbet, L'Origine du Monde, 1866, Musee d'Orsay*
Tanja Ostojic, L'origine du monde, 2002
Courbet's work was part of the Realist movement and questions society's moral values. What do you think Ms. Ostojic could be getting at? (It may {or may not} be helpful to know that she is Serbian, and the circle of stars is the emblem for the European Union)
Read more at the Musee d'Orsay and/or ARTMargins.
4 comments:
Hi my name is willem and i am a south african writer. i just finished a book on the life of a girl growing up. the centre around which the story is written is about Courbet (in) famous painting. I am mesmerized by it and the sheer power it represent. What is your take on it?
The EU is the end of the world!!!
Or, perhaps a less alarmist interpretation might be that Serbian identity and power is obscured by European unity?
the courbet painting is interesting to me for a few reasons- 1) the image is cropped very specifically to include the breasts and the vagina and nothing else, overtly objectifying the woman and her sexuality. since nothing in the image specifies this is any woman in particular, i wonder if it is meant to represent women as an entire gender. 2)i can only imagine what scandal would have ensued over the public display of this image. they say no publicity is bad publicity, i'm sure courbet benefitted from this. 3)courbet must have known that this painting would have had such a reaction, i wonder what was in his mind when he made the choice to depict something so graphic that it could be argued to be pornographic.
You have lovely thighs!
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