(Metz) The Franco-Luxembourgish performer Deborah de Robertis, who claimed to be at the origin of an action at the beginning of May at the Center Pompidou-Metz where five works, including the painting The origin of the world of Courbet, were tagged and another thief was charged, we learned on Monday from the Metz court.
The artist “was indicted (indicted, Editor’s note) on May 29”, confirmed to AFP the public prosecutor Yves Badorc, confirming information from the newspaper The world.
She was charged with “deliberate damage or deterioration of cultural property” during a meeting as well as the theft of cultural property during a meeting, the magistrate said.
Deborah de Robertis had notably claimed from the AFP a gesture of “reappropriation” of an embroidery by Annette Messager, which came from the personal collection of an art critic who was also curator of the exhibition “Lacan, quand art meets psychoanalysis.”
A work by Mme de Robertis was also presented in this exhibition.
The artist was placed under judicial control, including a ban on appearing in a place where cultural property is exhibited or a ban on appearing in the French department of Moselle, where Metz is located, Mr. Badorc said.
Two other women, born in 1986 and 1993, who had tagged the works with the words “MeToo”, were arrested on May 6, the same day of the action, after being dragged towards the exit of the exhibition dedicated to psychoanalyst Lacan at the Center Pompidou-Metz. They were also charged and placed under judicial supervision.
The three women are prohibited from coming into contact with each other.
“Being placed in police custody and indicted for having used my artistic freedom and my freedom of expression is completely disproportionate,” reacted Mme de Robertis to AFP.
On the sidelines of her action at the museum, she had made a report to the Paris court against several men from the world of contemporary art, describing them as “calculators”, “predators” or “censors”.
On May 10, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, where the work is usually exhibited, announced that it had filed a complaint after the painting by Gustave Courbet was tagged, The origin of the world. He announced that if the painting was protected by glass, the frame had received “numerous splashes of paint which could leave lasting marks even after restoration”.
Painted in 1866, this painting represents a woman’s genitals. Entering the collections of the Musée d’Orsay in 1995, it was loaned to the Center Pompidou-Metz as part of an exhibition dedicated to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who was its last private owner.
The exhibition Lacan. When art meets psychoanalysis is now complete.
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.