L’Origine du monde has been compared to the Mona Lisa, not because they share a lot in common,
they obviously don’t, but because there is, at least in the art world,
an almost mythological aura surrounding both paintings.
L’Origine du monde’s legendary aura comes from its controversial subject-matter which, for decades,
has been subject of controversy, been hidden and censored. In 1986, art historian Linda Nochlin
concluded her short essay describing her quest to find the missing painting Courbet's "L'origine du
monde": The Origin without an Original by saying: “Or, to return to our original Freudian scenario,
one might say that in the case of Courbet’s Origin of the World, as in that of the founding
myth of Oedipus, the search for lost origins leads ultimately to blindness.”
The painting was known, but had become a myth with only reproductions through which to see
it. Peter Webb would say: “This painting has rarely been seen or even heard of,
and judgement of its quality is difficult from the blurred photograph that remains.”
It was only in a 1988 exhibition at the Brooklyn museum, co-curated by Nochlin,
that the public could finally appreciate Gustave Courbet’s l’Origine du Monde.
This painting is a controversial one. It sparks many conversations and debates as to who the
model for this painting is, or if this painting isn’t just a cutout piece of a larger portrait.
The woman could be a model, his lover, or his mother… This could be the framing
intended by Courbet, but it could also be a small part of a larger canvas.
Either way, these debates could help us understand this painting
and the intention of the artist, but they don’t necessarily dictate what
this painting can be about. That’s up to us, the viewer, to decide.
1. Realism and the Nude
Courbet was quite radical, both politically and artistically. When he was rejected at the
Universal Expo of 1855, he opened his own pavilion in front of it and called it the
Pavilion du Réalisme. In a nutshell, realism wasn’t about showing the world realistically,
but about showing the real world. Not an idealized world,
not your conventional subjects, not angels, but the raw world, the real thing.
“Show me an angel, and I'll paint one” would say Courbet. He would paint workers or a country-side
funeral, something the Parisian public at the time wouldn’t appreciate. It was too close to reality.
Now, applied to nudes, this concept of realism, which Courbet pioneered, can become controversial.
Think of Le Sommeil, which was made and sold in 1866 to the Ottoman diplomat,
and erotic painting enthusiast, Khalil-Bey.
If we compare Le Sommeil to The Birth of Venus made by Cabanel three years earlier,
we might get closer to understanding how exactly Courbet was a realist.
Cabanel paints a nude, a nude to be devoured by a male audience. His Venus
was a success. It can’t be denied, artists all throughout history have used Venus as a
pretext to paint sensual nudes that men can gather around and relish.
Courbet, through Le Sommeil notably, exposes the hypocrisy behind such a
convention. Manet confronted this convention by showing nude women in a modern context,
but Courbet confronts his viewers by showing his audience what they really want,
but don’t fully admit. They want sex, they want to be aroused by these paintings. That’s what
they really want, it’s what they want for real and Courbet depicts the real.
But showing lesbian sex, or at least lesbians recovering from sex,
isn’t the most real he’ll get. This is where we get to The Origin of the World.
Again, Courbet goes one step further into depicting what
men truly want when they look at a nude.
These men may not want to admit it, they may act like they’re disgusted by it,
but what they want in a nude is a relaxed, sensual young woman opened to a visit,
which is why they’re very often seen reclining.
Courbet depicts a woman on her back, her legs spread apart, clearly showing her vulva. He
injects a sense of reality in the nude. It is, as some have said, more nude than nude.
No matter how uncovered nudes are historically, they rarely, if not ever,
show their genitalia. There’s a strange prudishness, some kind of contradiction.
These women are completely naked and aren’t hiding anything. Yet we never see their vulva.
Perhaps, if artists were to paint vulvas, it would make it too obvious that nudes were
meant to arouse. These are sexual paintings, but they are, quote unquote, “not meant to be
sexual”. Not showing genitalia covers the artists against accusations of producing pornography.
Courbet, obviously, wasn’t afraid of such accusations and,
though this painting wasn’t initially meant for the public,
I think we can still see it as either a denunciation of the hypocrisy of the nude
tradition or, at the very least, the logical conclusion, through realism, of the nude.
There are many ways of interpreting and analyzing this painting. We could see it
through, more specifically, the theme of the erotic and, as many people have asked,
if this is an invitation or not, if our gaze is even welcomed or not.
There’s also the lens of female objectification which is definitely present here considering that
this woman is stripped from her identity. We don’t see her face, we only see the object of desire.
However, I want to conclude this video by exploring a second way of viewing this painting.
2. The Origin of the World
We can analyze it, not through its subject or through its relation to
traditional conventions, but through its title.
Why would this painting represent the origin of the world?
If we are to believe that Courbet was a humanist, which is quite evident through
his beliefs, we could see, in the title, an homage to humanity.
The world is self-aware through humans, through us. We are quite extraordinary. More-so than
for any other species, we are shaped by our world but, more importantly, our world is shaped by us.
What creates our world, what shapes it, modifies it, defines it is us. And what
is the point of origin of humans, all humans. Well, you see it here.