The origin of the world

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L'Origine du monde ("The origin of the world") (Gustave Courbet)
L'Origine du monde ("The origin of the world")
Gustave Courbet , 1866
Oil on canvas
46 × 55 cm
Musée d'Orsay

The Origin of the World ( L'Origine du monde ) is a painting by Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) from 1866. The scandalous painting is now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris . It is painted in oils on canvas .

description

The picture shows a close-up view of the hairy vulva of a lying, naked woman with her thighs spread. The rest of the body is not shown , with the exception of the abdomen and a breast with a nipple . The naturalistic representation of the unveiled female sex in the center of the picture is underlined by the soft lines of the silk-like material that partially covers the woman's body. The brown background contrasts with the bright, shiny human skin in the foreground.

history

Gustave Courbet painted the picture “The Origin of the World” in 1866 as a commissioned work for the Turkish diplomat and art collector Halil Şerif Paşa , also known as Khalil Bey, who, among other nudes by Courbet, also owned “ The Turkish Bath ” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres . It is unclear who the depicted was. In addition to Khalil Bey's lover, Joanna Hifferan , who was available to Courbet several times as a nude model, comes into question for this. While Khalil Bey showed the other nudes from his collection to visitors in his salon, he kept the picture “The Origin of the World” hidden from guests. Due to financial difficulties, Khalil Bey had to auction his art collection in 1868.

"The origin of the world" initially went to the antique dealer Antoine de la Narde. When Edmond de Goncourt discovered the picture in his shop in 1889, it was hidden behind a wooden cover that was decorated with the picture “ Le château de Blonay ” from 1874–1877 . The wooden frame of this depiction of a snowy landscape with a church could only be opened with a key, which means that the picture “The origin of the world” behind it remained hidden from prying eyes.

The Hungarian painter and collector Baron Ferenc von Hatvany bought the painting “The Origin of the World” in 1910 from the Parisian gallery Bernheim-Jeune and brought it to Budapest . It stayed there until the end of the Second World War . Due to the Jewish origins of his family, Hatvany stored the most valuable pictures of his art collection in various Budapest bank vaults in 1942. He deposited the picture “The Origin of the World” under the name of his non-Jewish secretary János Horváth, which meant that it remained undiscovered by the German occupiers. After Russian troops opened the bank vaults in 1945, “The Origin of the World” was initially sold on the Budapest black market. In 1946 Hatvany managed to buy back the painting for 10,000 forints from a dealer . Since he could not take the picture with him when he emigrated to Paris in 1947, Claire Spiess, his nephew's wife, smuggled it to France a short time later. Here Hatvany showed the picture to the art dealer Fritz Nathan in 1949 .

In 1955, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan bought the original from an unknown private hand. He and his wife, actress Sylvia Bataille , hung it in their country house in Guitrancourt . But even there it was hidden from public view: Lacan asked his brother-in-law André Masson to build him a sliding double frame for it, which showed another painting in front. Masson then painted a landscape that exactly followed the lines of the original. To reinforce the surrealism of this version, it had the same name ("L'Origine du monde").

The picture did not reappear until Lacan's death in 1981 and initially remained in France. In the Brooklyn Museum in New York City was in 1988 for the first time presented to the public. After Sylvia Bataille died, it was moved to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris in 1995 , where it has been on display ever since.

The French magazine Paris Match and the German magazine Der Spiegel published a theory in 2013 that L'Origine du monde was originally part of a larger composition. According to Courbet expert Jean-Jacques Fernier, a painting of a woman's head, possibly by Courbet, was discovered in 2010. Both images could have been cut out of a larger nude of a reclining woman. In a press release dated February 8, 2013, the Musée d'Orsay rejected speculations about a possible association between the two paintings as “hypothèses fantaisistes”.

Identification of the model

Alexandre Dumas fils is said to have written to George Sand : "On ne peint pas de son pinceau le plus délicat et le plus sonore l'interview de Mlle Queniault [sic] de l'Opéra". The Dumas researcher Claude Schopp found the "interview" in the transcription strange and took a look at the original letter. Instead of “l'interview” (an obvious transcription error that distorts the meaning), it says “l'intérieur”. According to the French literary scholar, the person portrayed is said to be Constance Quéniaux, a ballet dancer at the Paris Opéra and at the same time the lover of the artist, Khalil Bey.

Relation of title and picture

“The origin of the world” as an image designation refers to the dual nature of the female genital organ : on the one hand as an object of sexual desire and the entrance to union , on the other hand as the exit of birth , from where every child sees the light of day for the first time . In this respect, the abdomen of women is the place of origin of humans, which makes any world experience possible. In this figurative sense, the picture represents the "origin" of all existence, perception and design of the human world.

The title has often been taken as a metaphysical allusion. In this perspective, humans are the origin of the ordered “world” ( monde ), in contrast to the wild originality of the “earth” ( terre ). If the human being is the reason for existence of a network of social orders and locations that transcends and dominates the “earth”, the female womb is literally the “origin of the world”. The “polarity of world and earth” served German mysticism as a manifestation of the contrast between “spiritual and spiritual” and “physical and material”. The world is based on the earth and the earth protrudes through the world. The term “world” stands for the “unconcealment of beings” ( Aletheia ). “Earth” is the “emergence that is not forced to anything” of the “constantly closing and mountainous”. This "dispute between world and earth", which Martin Heidegger was supposed to call the "origin of the work of art" in 1936, seems to have already started here. The “world” is considered the reason for the existence of “ truth ” and “ reality ”, so humans appear as their “origin”. The explicitness of the representation can also allude to the unconcealment of beings and becoming in the sense of Aletheia (Greek: truth).

It was such hidden motives and references that made Courbet interesting for psychoanalysis . The double character of the "origin" - on the one hand as the goal of all longing , on the other hand as the beginning of life - comes e.g. B. in a poem by Hans Arnfrid Astel about the motif that he dedicates to Courbet and Lacan at the same time:

"L'ORIGINE DU MONDE (November 1996)
for Courbet & Lacan
The inner lips blink from the outer ones.
The land is reflected in the water of life,
laughing bank of all landing wishes.
Here the world springs into the world at birth,
after the world had previously entered the world. "

The revelation of the female womb as the origin of the world can be interpreted in several directions: The picture and title can be understood as a reminder of the original state before the " Fall ", when Adam and Eve were naked, without being ashamed of them. According to this reading, Courbet wants to bring the viewer closer to the sense of his humanity , his instinctual dependence on the other.

The vulva as revelation of the origin of all things can in turn express great reverence for undisguised sexuality . In direct simplicity, the viewer is drawn to the essentials: the state of knowledge , all reflection , before all division and alienation seems to be within reach in the sexual union with the presented body. The woman's personality - her "face" - remains hidden from the eye. The picture therefore looks like an invitation to pure sexual intercourse .

“Idealistic” title and “realistic” image motif are unmistakably in tension with one another. With every possible interpretation - the female sex as a place of pleasure, the starting point of life or a reference to the state of paradisiacal innocence - the "origin of the world", contrary to its superficial revelation, is not a directly tangible object. The picture does not show what the title promises: it is sensual, arousing emotions, specifically in relation to its subject. It is not intended to be an illustration of any term or general abstraction.

The tension between the title and the subject should possibly distract from the scandalous effect of the picture and alleviate it: Then the title would have a “covering” function against the “revealing” content. On the other hand, the tension between the picture title and the picture content can intensify its scandalous effect: The title contains a universal claim, suggests a philosophical or religious reflection on the entirety of nature and stimulates it. The content then actually confronts the viewer with nature: but with his own, immediate "fleshly lust" and sensual world experience.

The painter intended the shock effect: Courbet saw his entire work as a protest against traditional artistic conventions and dogmatism . He tried to blow it up with his pictures. Especially as pure pornography , the picture would hardly have achieved this effect.

Courbet painted his picture in such a way that the viewer also met a glance. The half-open vulva sees the viewer's gaze, she squints at him.

effect

The confrontation with the concrete reality of human sexuality is the obvious theme of the picture. It was already considered a turning point in the history of painting during Courbet's lifetime and made the rounds in Parisian salons not only because of the offensive motif . After that it became a myth - also because nobody saw it anymore . The story of its being hidden shows that it pushed the taboos of art.

In the Musée d'Orsay

Even since its rediscovery and first exhibition , the picture has provoked some violent reactions. The accusation of pornography was repeatedly raised in feature sections and debates: the limits of art seemed to have been exceeded here. The unveiled representation of the vulva still triggers violent reactions from the audience today. In the Musée d'Orsay, a security guard was therefore commissioned to permanently guard this work of art only.

The image motif and that which takes place invisibly and visibly outside the frame are inseparable: the uncovered gender and the cover with which it was surrounded, but also the renewed exposure without the previous cover show the expressiveness of the image and are part of its effect .

In the history of art , the motif marks a certain end point of realism: the realistic representation and the image detail contradicted each other. A contemporary of Courbet remarked:

The artist, who naturalistically copied his model, forgot to reproduce the feet, legs [...] and head.

This omission of the head is exactly the perspective that feminism would describe a hundred years later as characteristic of pornography: the woman becomes an object of male exploitation, a pure body without face and personality. In addition to depicting sexuality and explicit nudity , the image touches on another taboo : social power structures and their iconographic updating. This makes the classic panel painting modern despite its figurative precision and traditional painting technique.

reception

The image found diverse reception in art. The artist Orlan (Mireille Suzanne Francette Porte) painted a paraphrase in 1989 and named it L'origine de la guerre ( The Origin of War ). The composition and perspective of the picture are exactly based on Courbet's, only it is not a female nude, but a male one, and the vulva facing the viewer has been replaced by a phallus. The work was shown in 2014 in an exhibition in Besançon to commemorate the centenary after the outbreak of the First World War .

One of the best-known pictures that were inspired by The Origin of the World is the photograph L'origine du monde by photographer Balthasar Burkhard , which, like the model, shows an unclothed torso with legs spread. The picture EU-Unterhose by artist Tanja Ostojić , who came from Yugoslavia, was mainly known in Austria. It shows a woman with underpants in the colors of the EU flag. In 2003, Sophie Matisse showed the outlines of the woman under a white cloth in a painting entitled Origin of the World .

In his adaptation of the novel Die Macht des Volk ( The Power of the People) by Jean Vautrin (Vol. 1: The cannons of March 18 , Ed. Moderne, 2002), the comic artist Jacques Tardi lets Courbet appear as an acquaintance of the fictional protagonist Captain Tarpagnan. He is in love with the beautiful Italian Gabriella Pucci, also known as Caf'Conc '. Courbet proudly shows his friends his latest work, The Origin of the World - lovingly copied by Tardi. When asked about his model, he names the prostitute Pucci.

With his Étant donnés, Marcel Duchamp created a work that can be read as a continuation of Courbet's origin . At the same time, Duchamp is mentioned as soon as it comes to the end of the nude in modern times. An ending that started with Courbet. Another indication that Courbet can be seen as a pioneer of modernity.

The veiled painting hung for many years in the country house of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan . He had acquired the picture in 1955. His friendship with Duchamp suggests that the artist was able to look at Courbet's original there. For Lacan, The Origin of the World was of crucial importance. In 1955 he visited Martin Heidegger in the Black Forest to discuss his essay on the truth as Aletheia, as unconcealment, with him. Heidegger owes Lacan, among other things, for being received differently in France than in Germany.

The Swedish comic artist Liv Strömquist published a comic on the cultural history of the female sex in 2014, which appeared in German in 2017 under the name Der Ursprung der Welt .

The Swiss artist Miriam Cahn painted L'origine du monde looks back in 2017 , the woman wearing a burqa on her head .

The painting gave the title of Ulrich Tukur's first novel The Origin of the World (2019).

literature

  • 1881: Maxime DuCamp: Les Convulsions de Paris . Reprint of the 5th edition from 1881 (Hachette, Paris). AMS, New York, ISBN 0-404-07180-5 (newspaper article).
  • 1994: Florence Noiville: Le retour du puritanisme . In: Le Monde , March 25, 1994,
  • 1995: Philippe Dagen: Le Musée d'Orsay dévoile "L'Origine du monde" . In: Le Monde , June 21, 1995.
  • 1996: Ferenc Jádi : Aki van, kíván: Jacques Lacan és Courbet - A világ eredete című festménye [Lacan and the "origin of the world" by Courbet] in: Thalassa (7), 1996, 1: pp. 119-134.
  • 1996: Philippe Dagen: Sexe, peinture et secret . In: Le Monde , October 22, 1996.
  • 1997: Günter Metken: Gustave Courbet “The Origin of the World”. A pleasure piece (transposed from the contemporary French voices by Stefan Barmann). Prestel, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-7913-1775-X .
  • 1997: Jochen Hörisch : The gaze seen - Günter Metken on Courbet's scandalous picture . In: Neue Gesellschaft / Frankfurter Hefte . Volume 11, 1997, pp. 1050-1052.
  • 1997: Linda Hentschel: Techniques of viewing porn-topical. Spatial perception and gender order in modern visual apparatus . (= Studies on Visual Culture , Volume 2). Jonas, Marburg 2001, ISBN 3-89445-287-0 (= dissertation Uni Bremen , 150 pages).
  • 2004: Thierry Savatier: L'origine du monde: histoire d'un tableau de Gustave Courbet . Bartillat, Paris 2006 ISBN 2-84100-377-9 .

Filmography

  • The revealing. Television documentary, Germany, 2005, 26 min., Director: Rudij Bergmann, production: SWR , series: Nackt ist die Kunst , synopsis by arte
  • The origin of the world. (OT: Courbet, l'origine du monde. ) TV documentary, France, 1996, 26 min., Script and director: Jean-Paul Fargier, production: Ex Nihilo, La Sept / arte, RMN, first broadcast in German: 19. October 2007, table of contents by arte

Web links

Commons : The origin of the world  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anja Heuss: Scattered to West and East in Art in Conflict , Eastern Europe, 56th year, issue 1–2, January – February 2006 pp. 91–95
  2. ↑ Marc Zitzmann: The Origin of the World: The Venus Mound in Close-up - An exhibition on Gustave Courbet's unprecedentedly bold painting . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . No. 189 . Zurich August 18, 2014, p. 16 .
  3. ↑ Jean-Jacques Fernier: "L'Origine du Monde" de Courbet a enfin un visage in Paris Match Online, accessed on February 8, 2013
  4. ↑ Stefan Simons: Famous Courbet painting: The nude now has a face. In: Spiegel Online . February 8, 2013, accessed June 9, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Musée d'Orsay: Communiqué de presse, February 8, 2013 (PDF; 20 kB).
  6. ^ "L'Origine du monde": The woman with a lower body faz.net of October 1, 2018
  7. ↑ Adapted from Le Point on September 25, 2018
  8. ^ Identity of Courbet's nude model revealed , welt.de, September 25, 2018
  9. ↑ Maxime Du Camp : Les Convulsiones de Paris , 4th vol., 5th edition, Paris 1881, vol. 2, pp. 189f.
  10. ↑ Limits. ( Memento from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Portrait of the artist Tanja Ostojic with a picture of the EU underpants, date 01/06.
  11. ↑ Miriam Kahn at Haus der Kunst , fourtyforever.com, July 13, 2019
  12. ↑ Ulrich Tukur: The origin of the world. Frankfurt a. M. 2019. pp. 13, 75, 149.