Lewd Frenchies

What a game that was last week! The Steelers won it 21 to 10 against the Seahawks. But do you remember the result of the 2004 edition of the Superbowl? Maybe, but what most people will remember about the game is… the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake wardrobe “malfunction”.

No need to show the picture for the umpteenth time. Everybody knows, as everybody knows the outcry it triggered all across America. A nipple! For 3 seconds on TV, with an audience totalling over a hundred million. In Europe, and in France for that matter, there was a general feeling of incredulity after the pictures were shown relentlessly, unpixelized for everyone to see. So, that’s what it was all about? Where’s the problem? Are Americans that frightened by the sight of a breast? French TV shows that all the time.

But maybe the French had some reason to smile at the seemingly puritan stand of Americans regarding nudity and the women’s body by and large. They’ve been there before… 

Museums all over the world are filled with paintings and sculptures of nudes. But there’s one in particular, probably only a French artist could have painted. His name is Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) and he is known as the master of the realist school. His most famous painting is “Bonjour Monsieur Courbet” (aka “the meeting”). But he also made one, called “L’Origine du Monde” (”the origin of the world”) that once belonged to the ambassador of the Ottoman Empire in Paris, and, among others, to the famous French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. When the latter died in 1981, his collection was donated to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris where this painting is now on unrestricted display and accessible to all visitors. 

That explains why the French were a bit amused by the tremor that jostled America at the sight of a nipple on TV when they are presented as masterpieces in museums…

So could this outstanding painting by Courbet travel to America and be exposed at the Art Institute of Chicago Museum or in the Austin Museum of Art? 

And do you think this sort of thing contributes to the reputation of the French regarding all things related to sex?