Revenge of Performance Art
The artist who shocked and captivated the art world a decade ago with a performance masterpiece recently unveiled a new performance, but this one revealed a #MeToo incident and exacted revenge on the curator-perpetrator. In 2014, Deborah de Robertis performed a genital exposure in front of Gustave Courbet’s “The Origin of the World” (1866) at the Musée d’Orsay. “The Origin of the World” is a representative work of realism, depicting a woman’s body from chest to thighs, showing genitalia or the “origin of the world.” The artist, barefoot and wearing a short golden dress, exposed her private parts and stared blankly at a camera for six minutes. De Robertis questioned, “Why is drawing a woman’s vulva art, but showing it obscene?” Continuing and evolving this theme in 2017, she was arrested for exposing her vulva in front of the Mona Lisa.
Last month, at the Pompidou-Metz Center’s exhibition “Lacan: When Art Meets Psychoanalysis,” de Robertis collaborated with two women who wrote “MeToo” in red on Courbet’s work as a revelation of sexual harassment by the exhibition’s curator, Bernard Marcadé, who developed the exhibition with his wife. The Musée d’Orsay’s “The Origin of the World” (1866) was once owned by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Due to the shocking nature of the painting at the time, Lacan reportedly kept it hidden behind a curtain, showing it secretly. As the Musée d’Orsay exhibition was about Lacan, psychology, and art, both “The Origin of the World” and de Robertis’s “The Origin of the Mirror,” a photograph of her performance in front of “The Origin of the World,” were displayed. The curator’s power is evident from the exhibited works. However, near the end of the exhibition, the #MeToo incident occurred. According to de Robertis’s plan, two women entered the exhibition, wrote “MeToo” on “The Origin of the World” and “The Origin of the Mirror,” and then stole a famous piece by Annette Messager. While Courbet’s work, covered with glass, was not damaged, the striking scarlet letters were shocking as a denunciation of men objectifying women. That message was clear, but why did she commit theft? Messager’s piece, “Je pense donc je suce (I think, therefore I suck),” is an embroidered work owned by the Lacan exhibition exhibition curator, Bernard Marcadé. De Robertis announced on her Instagram that she would not return the embroidery piece to Marcadé, and posted a video from 10 years ago showing Marcadé behind the camera making sexual demands of the naked de Robertis. The Messager piece hung in the background and Marcadé could be heard using the phrase embroidered on the piece.
Deborah de Robertis is not the first to perform genital exposure in art. Valie Export, in her work “Action Pants: Genital Panic (1968),” entered an art cinema in Munich wearing pants with the front cut out and a leather jacket, walking among the seated audience. Her exposed vulva was at the audience’s eye level, making it impossible to avoid. It was a challenge to communicate with a “real woman” instead of a passive image on the screen and a bold feminist statement against consumerism and technological society of the time. However, Deborah de Robertis’s #MeToo performance and revenge seem to take the medium to a new level.
The combination of #MeToo revelations through art and the meaningful phrase on the stolen embroidery clearly show de Robertis directly challenging the predator who exploited her. Did the curator forget about the incident, or did he unconsciously display these three works as trophies in the same exhibition? The art industry is undoubtedly maturing, but many of exploitative power structures still exist. As long as collectors, critics, curators, and even artists who wield influence over others abuse that power, the industry will continue to face challenges. And, presumably, artists such as de Robertis will find a way to reveal, expose and overthrow them.
Translated from Hankook Ilbo (Korea Times Column) https://www.hankookilbo.com/News/Read/A2024061114390003553
by Dr. Stephanie Seungmin Kim