justice orders the removal of an erotic fresco

The Toulouse administrative court orders the CHU to remove a fresco exhibited in the canteen of the boarding school of the Purpan hospital in Toulouse, France Bleu Occitanie said on Wednesday, December 8. Openly erotic parody of Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix, this painting represents CHU executives having sex, biting their buttocks, with a collar around their neck or on all fours. The summary judge considers that the pornographic nature of the fresco is a serious and manifestly illegal attack on respect for human dignity.

Two feminist associations and a union are at the origin of the summary liberty examined last week by the administrative court of Toulouse. In addition to the attack on human dignity, the judge had been seized on the basis of attacks on equality between women and men and the fundamental freedom not to be subjected to sexual harassment at work.

The Sud Santé Social union and feminist associations denounce an ugly, degrading, pornographic and sexist fresco, while some interns claim a form of freedom of expression and a culture “rifle”, specific to medical students, openly assuming saucy and self-mockery. A tradition so ingrained that the controversy did not come from the ranks of the students themselves or the hospital staff recognizable on the board and who gave their consent.

On October 25, faced with more and more press articles, the Toulouse University Hospital had already asked the association of interns to take down the erotic fresco. The instruction was never followed until this decision of the Administrative Court of Toulouse which also rejects the request for disciplinary proceedings against the agents who decided to hang the painting.