Vibrators and dildos line up next to a famous painting: The Bolt. This masterpiece by Fragonard appears at the corner of a picture rail in the new exhibition that the Musée des Arts décoratifs is devoting to "L’intime, de la chambre aux réseaux sociaux" ("Intimacy, from the bedroom to social networks"). Although the painting has not come from far away, on loan from the neighbouring Louvre, was it really necessary to move it to a confidential section away from innocent eyes, where it would be relegated to the sex toys?
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- 1. Display of sex toys
"Intimacy, from the bedroom to social networks" exhibition
Paris Musée des Arts décoratifs
Photo : bbsg - See the image in its page
There is a lot to be said for this exhibition, which is all the more disappointing in that it promised to be fascinating. As the subject is not clearly defined, there are many gaps in the exhibition. Why does it begin in the eighteenth century? That’s when the word "intimate" first appeared. Yet a symposium in 2019 and 2021 focused at length on "l’intime et l’intimité au Siècle d’or [1]. And while the word was not in use in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the notion can be seen in many ways: in the work of several painters first of all - is it not inherent in the art of Vermeer? - in the various subjects depicted by artists - King Candaule’s wife is a fine example; it is also associated with certain places - "Sire, Marly?" - and to certain privileged relationships - "Because it was him, because it was me".
Not only is the seventeenth century sacrificed, but the space reserved for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is cramped; the evocation of intimacy in these remote times could nevertheless surprise visitors in the twenty-first century. Confined to the first sections - as was the case for the exhibition on Luxury (see article) - the few objects from the past are systematically confronted with those of the present, which are far too invasive.
A whole section devoted to urinals takes visitors from the Bourdaloue to the Toto. The former, named after a Jesuit who was a brilliant preacher of interminable sermons, is a small porcelain or earthenware receptacle shaped to fit the female anatomy, and which ladies used to slip under their skirts to relieve themselves while drinking in the words of Monsieur l’abbé. The second is the nec plus ultra of the toilet cubicle in 2024, with unsuspected options. Between the dildos and the toilet bowls, intimacy at the MAD doesn’t come cheap. The tour soon turns exclusively to the 20th and 21st centuries, focusing on the issues raised by new technologies and social networks, culminating in videos by the famous influencer Lena Situations, well known to our readers. (The important thing is to know that she inspires millions of Internet users by talking about her hectic daily life).
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- 2. Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806)
The Bolt, 1777-1778
Oil on canvas - 74 x 94 cm
Paris, Musée du Louvre
Photo: Musée du Louvre - See the image in its page
Beyond the treatment of the subject, some of the comments on old works leave the visitor perplexed. The presence of The Bolt is explained in the following terms: "Exhibiting it today shows that the issue of consent is not just a contemporary one". Why choose this word "consent", so strictly defined in 2024 in the wake of countless sexual scandals, to comment on a work from the Age of Enlightenment and libertinism, whose interest lies precisely in the ambiguity of the scene? Alongside the painting, small objects with licentious decorations serve as a reminder that "in the 18th century, the libertine century, erotic images linked to the intimate register became widespread, but remained subject to the ’male gaze’". The expression refers to the male gaze, often cast on women’s bodies, which "imposes a heterosexual cisgender male perspective". Is this highly topical formula appropriate when it comes to evoking 18th-century libertinism and erotic imagery? Instead of analysing the historical, social and artistic context in which a work was created, precisely in order to understand it better, we prefer to apply the notions and values of our time to it.
This anachronistic reading of ancient art permeates a number of exhibitions. The current exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay devoted to Gustave Caillebotte is symptomatic. The project was prompted by American art historians [2] who suggest that the artist was driven by repressed homosexual desires; they cite as proof the number of men - clothed, with two exceptions - who populate his paintings, far outnumbering the number of female figures. Moreover, if he abandoned the human figure in the 1880s, devoting himself to flowers, it was because the turmoil he felt in front of the bodies and gazes of his male models was too painful...
And that’s how Caillebotte comes out from the grave. The exhibition doesn’t really know what to make of the discreet Charlotte Berthier, who was his companion. She appears in several of the master’s paintings, and is even naked as a jaybird on a sofa in a painting from Minneapolis. The artist also included her in his will. But that doesn’t count. Through her eyes, more ambiguous and more feminine than we might think, Caillebotte also revealed a crisis of masculinity in French society after the 1870 war. In the end, all those who admire his painting for the boldness of its framing and perspectives, for its views of the modern city and for the treatment of its figures presented from behind or half-cut, have failed to understand the true audacity of his art.
Perhaps, no doubt, why not. Firstly, does this approach of counting female and male figures to determine a painter’s sexuality apply to all artists? In other words, can we conclude that Berthe Morisot was a lesbian, despite her marriage to Eugène Manet? Secondly, in what way does a painter’s undisclosed homosexuality - which is all the more difficult to prove given that there are no family archives - make his talent more admirable or his work more modern than it already is? Thirdly, doesn’t this reading based on the question of gender reveal our era rather than Caillebotte’s? To suggest that the man’s gaze in Le Pont de l’Europe (ill. 3) would be "more interested in the worker towards whom his gaze seems to be directed" than in his companion surely says more about the writer of the cartel than it does about Gustave Caillebotte.
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- 3. Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894)
Le Pont de l’Europe, c. 1876
Oil on canvas - 124.7 x180.6 cm
Genève, Petit Palais, Musée d’Art moderne
Photo: Wikipedia (public domain) - See the image in its page
The desire to look at ancient art through the prism of the concerns of our time often leads to interpretations that are misguided, to say the least. Feminism, another key movement of the 21st century, is having unexpected consequences in museums: driven by a frenzied desire to showcase women, they are sometimes organising "henhouse" exhibitions (see article). These bring together artists whose only common denominator is their female gender, and who are ultimately too numerous to learn anything about. Fortunately, some projects are based on a more subtle and scientific approach: the "Femmes chez les Nabis" exhibition at Pont-Aven did not seek to do justice to female artists unjustly forgotten by history, but attempted to show the role they played alongside the Nabis by recalling the social context of the period (see article).
Another 21st-century struggle, the fight against racism, vital though it is, also leads to some aberrations in the way works are read. We remember Lilian Thuram’s torpedoing of Orientalist painting at the Musée Delacroix (see article). Much more nuanced, the exhibition on the ’Black Model’ at Orsay (see article) was not devoid of anachronisms either. The project, once again born in the United States, was based on a study of the scandal caused by Manet’s Olympia at the Salon of 1865. Although it was the prosaism of the prostitution scene that shocked public opinion, historian Denise Murrell was surprised that the black servant remained invisible both in the criticism of the time and in the analysis of that criticism. And to do justice to this historically neglected black woman, the artist Larry Rivers created a work entitled I Like Olympia in Black Face, reversing the roles of the black servant and the white mistress. The intention was undoubtedly laudable, but is turning a woman from a servant into a prostitute a social achievement?
This desire to look at art through the prism of the concerns of our time is often inept and sometimes dangerous when a work is considered too embarrassing, unsuited to our values, or simply politically incorrect. We all remember the Musée du Luxembourg’s aberrant exhibition "Mirror of the World, Masterpieces from the Dresden Cabinet", which called into question every one of these treasures, and in particular objects made of ivory: "Can we still exhibit ivory pieces without encouraging illegal trade?" (see article). At this rate, there won’t be much left to see in museums.
In the end, all these exhibitions will probably be a subject of study for a discipline called the history of art history, which studies all forms of discourse about works of art, but also about the historical and ideological conditions in which these discourses were developed. In the meantime, let’s hope that Giuseppe Arcimboldo will soon be in the limelight, as he already announced in the 16th century the need to eat five fruits and vegetables, as was Botero, who was fighting against body shaming. As for Louis-César Ducornet, who was born without arms and painted (very well) with his feet, isn’t he the embodiment of the indispensable and sacrosanct ’resilience’ against the prevailing ’validism’?