By Antony Speciale
Published on
7 May 24 at 2:48 p.m.
updated on May 7, 24 at 2:49 p.m.
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More and more images and elements are surfacing on the networks since the discovery of the vandalism committed on several works of the Pompidou-Metz center Monday May 6, 2024.
As a reminder, several tables, including The origin of the world, were covered with red paint. Gustave Courbet’s painting, representing the vulva of a naked woman, was protected by glass. All have been covered with the inscription Me Too with red paint.
A work by Annette Messager was also stolen. All acts were filmed and broadcast on social networks. The works were exhibited as part of the exhibition “Lacan: when art meets psychoanalysis”, which started on December 31, 2023 and ended on Monday May 27.
How the works could be tagged
In a press release released Monday evening, the Pompidou-Metz center gave some details on how these acts could have been carried out.
Several people presented themselves as visitors to go to Gallery 2 of the Pompidou-Metz center (…). Some of these people created a diversion with the mediation and security personnel, allowing other members of the group to tag the words Me Too on several works.
In videos posted on social media, two women are seen writing with red paint on several boards, then chanting “Me Too” several times.
The museum specifies that “all the works are currently examined” and that “an investigation is open”. Two people were arrested at this stage and a third is soughtaccording to a police Source.
Artist Deborah De Robertis claims these actions
Later in the evening of Monday, then in the night from Monday to Tuesday and finally in the morning, the Luxembourg artist Deborah DeRobertis claimed responsibility for these actions and justified his actions. “I consider this work to be mine,” she wrote on Instagram about the stolen work. She explains her motivations on X (formerly Twitter).
I am the exclusive organizer of this performance and am waiting to be summoned by the police who know who my lawyer is. I am in possession of Annette Messager’s work which I have reappropriated and which is now mine. The works were neither vandalized nor damaged since the “paint” erases in a second and without damage, which I made sure of.
In a publication on Instagram, the artist explains having “forced the door of the Pompidou-Metz center to introduce [mon] artwork “. It ended up being included in the exhibition collection.
“Feminist extremism” denounced by the mayor of Metz
Monday evening, the mayor of Metz, François Grosdidier, reacted through a press release, but also with Lorraine News, on these acts. “This is feminist extremism,” he said.
We are in a society where individuals take up causes, which may or may not be noble, which we may share or not, but who defend it with a fairly staggering degree of fanaticism and extremism. We see how certain political, philosophical, ecological or other causes, which we could share, are in fact completely misguided by this form of fanaticism which is unfortunately increasingly unbridled and uninhibited.
The elected official hopes that “the authors will be prosecuted, firmly sanctioned, because the Republic must really put a stop to these forms of obscurantism and fanaticism which embrace absolutely all causes”.
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