The Origin of the world

the Origin of the world is a table carried out by Gustave Courbet in 1866. It is about an oil on fabric of 46 cm by 55 cm representing the sex and the Belly of a naked Woman lengthened on a bed, the isolated thighs.

The framing of the scene, between the thighs and the chest, reinforces the erotism work. Moreover, a Center in erection and the redness of the large lips let think that the model has just had a sexual relation.

A history strewn with famous names

Through the history of work, of Khalil-Bey to Lacan, one crosses many famous characters whose discretion often contrasts with the scandalous character of the Origin of the world .

A model with the dubious identity

At the time of the realization of the table, the preferred model of Courbet was an young woman, Joanna Hiffernan, known as OJ . It is his/her lover James Whistler, American painter admiror and disciple of Billhook, which had lent it to Courbet.

In 1866 Courbet carried out another table, the beautiful Irish , whose model was Joanna Hiffernan. In any Billhook carried out four portraits of OJ. She was probably the model of the Origin of the world , which would explain brutal separation between Courbet and Whistler little time after the realization of work. Whistler turned over then to the the United States, leaving a will in favor of OJ. In spite of the difference in coloring of the russet-red hair of OJ and darker pubic hairs of the Origin of the world , the assumption that OJ was the model of this last prevails.

In I was the origin of the world , published in 2000, the novelist Christine Orban takes party by imagining how the narrator, Joanna Hiffernan, was the amante of Billhook and the model of the famous table. Already Bernard Teyssèdre, in the novel of the origin 1996 whose central figure is table itself (" it arrives to him from there, of the adventures! ") had proposed to see as a Joanna Hiffernan the model. On the other hand, in its historical test " The Origin of the world, history of a table of Gustave Courbet" (2006), Thierry Savatier questions this assumption and advances a possible photographic source.

Discrete owners

The order of the Origin of the world is allotted to Khalil-Bey, a Turkish diplomat, former ambassador of the Ottoman Empire to Athens and Saint-Pétersbourg coldly installed with Paris. Presented by Holy-Beuve to Courbet, it ordered a fabric with this last for its personal collection of erotic tables. This one counted inter alia the Turkish bath of Ingres and the Sleep , another table of Billhook known also under the name Dormeuses .

Khalil-bey was ruined by his debts gambling and one knows little the following owners of the table. In 1868, at the time of the sale of the collection Khalil-Bey, the antique dealer Antoine of Narde acquired of it. Edmond de Goncourt then saw it in an antique dealer in 1889, hidden by a panel painted " The Castle of Blonay" belonging to the Museum of the Art schools of Budapest. According to Robert Fernier, the baron François de Hatvany bought it with the Galerie Bernheim-Young person in 1910 to carry it with Budapest where this collector Hungarian preserved it until the Second world war.

The last owner of the table was Jacques Lacan. With the actress Sylvia Battles, it acquired in 1955 of it to install it in its country house of Guitrancourt. The psychoanalyst asked André Masson, his brother-in-law, to build a framework at double bottom and to paint another work over. This one carried out a surrealist version of the Origin of the world , more suggested much. The public New Yorkean had however the unique opportunity to admire the Origin of the world in 1988 during the exposure Courbet Reconsidered to the Brooklyn Museum. After the death of Lacan in 1981, the ministry for the economy and finances accepted that the death taxes of the family are regulated by dation of work with the museum of Orsay in 1995.

Impact of realism

the Origin of the world emerges during one time of handing-over in question of the values morals. The table had an at the same time artistic and social impact, which perdure nowadays.

A provocative work

The XIXe century knew in the representation of naked the first steps of a pictorial revolution whose main actors were Courbet and Manet. Billhook rejected academic painting and its naked smooth, idealized, but attacked also directly the hypocritical propriety of the Second Empire, where the erotism even the Pornographie were tolerated when it was about mythological painting or oneiric.

The Réalisme of Billhook, which was prided later never not to have lied in its painting, pushed back the limits always further from the presentable one. With the Origin of the world , it exhiba to some extent the hidden part of the Olympia of Manet. Maxime of the Camp, in a severe diatribe, reported its visit at the silent partner of the work and its vision of a table “giving the last word of realism”.

A still current influence

In 1989, the plastician Orlan is inspired some to carry out the Origin of the war , during masculine and phallic of the table of Billhook in a gesture impresses Féminisme.

In France, in February 1994, because of the cover of the novel perpetual Worships of Jacques Henric, reproducing the Origin of the world , the police force visited several bookstores to make withdraw the book of the windows. Some as the bookstore Rome with Clermont-Ferrand maintained it out of window but the Sandals of Empédocle to Besancon withdrew it, and certain bookstores did it themselves. The author was afflicted these events: “A few years ago, the booksellers were countervailing powers. When the ministry for the interior, in 1970, had prohibited the book of Pierre Guyotat, Eden, Eden, Eden , the bookstores had been places of resistance. Today, they precede the censure… ”.

Although morality and the interdicts which it dictates evolved/moved since Courbet, in particular thanks to the Photographie and with the Cinéma, the table remained provocative, testifies to it the event which represented its entry with the museum of Orsay. A guard was even affected permanently with the monitoring of this only part, to observe the reactions of the public.

The Serb artist Tanja Ostojic took as a starting point this work by imitating it in a provocative style. Work was presented during the exposure Europart on current art in Europe which was held with Vienna in 2005.

The scenario writer Philippe Ramos also took as a starting point the Origin of the world for his film Capitaine Achab with Valerie Crunchant and Frederic Bonpart.

References

Philippe Dagen, the Museum of Orsay reveals “the Origin of the world” in Le Monde of the June 21st 1995
Philippe Dagen, Sexe, painting and secret in Le Monde of the October 22nd 1996
Maxime Of the Camp, the Convulsions of Paris , 1878
Isabelle Enaud Lechien, James Whistler , ACR Édition
Stephan Guégan and Michele Haddad, ABCdaire de Courbet , Flammarion
Florence Noiville, the return of the puritanism in Le Monde of the March 25th 1994
Thomas Schlesser, “the Origin of the world” in Dictionary of the pornography (under the direction of Philippe Di Folco), Paris, University Presses of France, 2005.
Bernard Teyssèdre, the Novel of the origin , Paris, Gallimard, 1996
Thierry Savatier, " The Origin of the world, history of a table of Gustave Courbet" , Bartillat, 2006

Catalog of films

Jean Paul Fargier, the Origin of the world , 1996

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