
L'Origine du Monde
1866 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Too explicit to exhibit for over a century, it stayed in private hands behind curtains and screens. No myth, no excuse, just the body.
★ 6.9

Too explicit to exhibit for over a century, it stayed in private hands behind curtains and screens. No myth, no excuse, just the body.

Courbet took the nude to the Salon with her hair loose, her body relaxed, and a parrot on her hand instead of a myth.

A Union officer faces three captured Confederates and the two halves of the country study each other. Homer had covered the war as an illustrator.

Two women asleep and entwined, painted on private commission and therefore out of reach of the Salon and its proprieties.