(Metz) Two women were charged Tuesday after the tags committed on five works at the Center Pompidou-Metz, in eastern France, including The origin of the world by Gustave Courbet (1866), we learned from the prosecution.
The two women, born in 1986 and 1993, “were indicted (charged) in particular for damage during assembly of cultural property and theft during assembly of cultural property”, Yves Badorc, prosecutor, told AFP of the Republic in Metz.
“They are both placed under judicial supervision with a ban from the Moselle department and a ban on contact” between them, he said.
Furthermore, one of the works “could have been compromised in its integrity, because they were not all protected, but this is not The origin of the world, which was protected by a glass,” said the prosecutor. “This will be verified as part of the judicial investigation.”
A video sent to AFP on Monday by Franco-Luxembourg performance artist Deborah de Robertis shows a woman tagging Courbet’s famous painting with red paint –– protected by glass – and another a different painting.
They are then seen chanting “Me Too”, spray paint in hand, before being dragged towards the exit by security agents.
A third person, who was not arrested, could, according to Mr. Badorc, be behind the theft of a work by Annette Messager, a red embroidery on fabric called I think so I suck (1991).
Deborah de Robertis claimed from the AFP a “gesture of reappropriation” of the stolen work, from the personal collection of an art critic who also curated the exhibition Lacan, when art meets psychoanalysiscurrently visible at the Pompidou-Metz center.
“I recognized her straight away, I wanted to vomit, because it’s the one hanging above her marital bed. I remembered the many blowjobs that he allowed himself to ask me for as if it was his due,” said M.me of Robertis in a press release.
A photo of Deborah de Robertis, baptized Mirror of the Origin of the world is also exposed near The origin of the world for the Center Pompidou-Metz exhibition dedicated to Jacques Lacan. We see the artist posing, naked, under Courbet’s work, on May 29, 2014 at the Musée d’Orsay.
Fined for stripping in front of the Lourdes Grotto in 2018, Deborah de Robertis was acquitted after other similar actions, notably in 2017 for showing her penis at the Louvre Museum in front of The Mona Lisa.