Art imitating art
January 18 2016
Picture:
There's a performance artist called Deborah Robertis, who likes to get naked in front of paintings of naked women. She also likes to get naked at other times too (as you'll see if you Google her as I did, purely in the name of research). In the above photo she's about to sit down and do her thing in front of Corbet's 'Origin of the World'. Apparently it's called 'vagina activism'.
Her most recent stunt got her arrested, however, as the Daily Star explains in suitably tabloid form:
Deborah de Robertis tore of her clothes in front of a portrait of a prostitute.
She then laid down starkers in the same pose as the picture’s saucy model.
Visitors to the French capital’s Musee d’Orsay museum had been casually looking at an exhibition featuring famous nude artworks when de Robertis offered them the real version.
Once the artist from Luxembourg was completely naked, she laid down under Eduord Manet’s painting of the prostitute Olympia and copied her sultry pose.
But the artist wasn’t completely bare – she was wearing a portable camera to film the shocked audience’s reaction.
Her lawyer has defended her mid-exhibition exhibitionism, saying: “it was an artistic performance”
"Putting an artist in custody sends a very bad message."
Some might say that putting this artist in custody sends rather a good message.
