Two women arrested after spraying ‘MeToo’ on 150-year-old vagina painting and other artworks

Seeking to "challenge the history of art," two women sprayed the words "MeToo" on a 19th-century painting of a vagina titled "l'Origine du Monde". Along with the more than 150-year-old painting, they also tagged four other artworks.

The painting, whose name means "The Origin of the World" in English, is a nude painted by French artist Gustave Courbet in 1866.

It is currently displayed in Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, on loan from the Musee d'Orsay as part of an exhibition centred on French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who once owned the painting, reports AFP.

Was the painting damaged beyond repair?

Thankfully, the work of art was protected by a glass pane. Despite that, as per AFP, police were on site to assess the damage.

The two women, identified only by their birth years — 1986 and 1993 — were arrested for spraying five artworks with the words "MeToo".

Another person, as per the report, escaped detention and is suspected to have stolen another artwork called "I Think Therefore I Suck," a piece by French artist Annette Messager.

French-Luxembourgish performance artist Deborah de Robertis in a conversation with WION said she had organised the spray painting as part of a performance titled: "You Don't Separate the Woman from the Artist".

She said that they were targeting famous paintings "because women are the origin of the world" and said the performance was carried out because "the very closed world of contemporary art has remained largely silent until now".

In an open letter, de Robertis denounced the behaviour of six men in the art world, and described them as "predators" and "censors".

The defacement of the art was criticised by French Culture Minister Rachida Dati.

On X, she wrote, "To 'activists' who think that art is not powerful enough to carry a message alone... An artwork is not a poster to colour in with the day's message."

(With inputs from agencies)