{"id":70826,"date":"2016-02-18T04:22:11","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T09:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=70826"},"modified":"2016-02-18T04:22:11","modified_gmt":"2016-02-18T09:22:11","slug":"van-gogh-museum-shows-paris-prostitution-through-paintings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/02\/18\/van-gogh-museum-shows-paris-prostitution-through-paintings\/","title":{"rendered":"Van Gogh Museum shows Paris prostitution through paintings"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Easy<\/a>
Easy Virtue. Prostitution in French Art, 1850-1910 exhibit at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (Photo courtesy of the official Twitter page of Van Gogh Museum<\/a>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

AMSTERDAM\u2014The ballet rehearsal painted in 1874 by French artist Edgar Degas looks, at first glance, like an innocent portrayal of dancers limbering up for a performance. But who’s that man in the shadowy background, straddling a chair, his top hat pulled down low over his eyes?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is he there? What’s he doing? Was he a member of staff of the Paris Opera? It’s possible,\u201d said Prof. Richard Thomson, one of the curators of a new exhibition at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum. \u201cOr was he the lover of one of the dancers? Somebody who kept a dancer? These are the things we don’t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ambiguity is one of the key themes of the exhibition opening Friday that explores artists’ fascination with prostitution in Paris in the second half of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries.<\/p>\n

The exhibition was a hit at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris before travelling to Amsterdam. \u201cSex sells,\u201d says Van Gogh Museum director Axel Rueger.<\/p>\n

But the show is about much more than sex, Rueger said Wednesday while standing in front of a gilded bed decorated with cherubs, its white sheets rumpled. The bed dominates a corner of one of the galleries where more than 100 works by some 40 different artists hang on walls painted the lurid reds and pinks of a boudoir in a Paris brothel.<\/p>\n

Divided into four themes, it first explores the age of ambiguity as Paris grew into a centre of conspicuous consumption the 19th century where everything, including women, could be bought and sold and nobody could be quite sure whether the woman on a street corner was a prostitute or not.<\/p>\n

\u201cHierarchies disappeared. People often slipped into unemployment and had nothing to back them up, so prostitution was flourishing,\u201d said Thomson, the Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh. \u201cPeople were uncertain about identity. Ambiguity made questions get raised: Who’s who? Will she? Won’t she? Is she, isn’t she?\u201d<\/p>\n

The exhibition then looks at Parisian prostitution’s superstars\u2014the courtesans\u2014through ostentatious portraits and some of their belongings, including a walking cane that hid a dainty\u2014if a whip can be dainty\u2014\u201ccat-o-six tails\u201d that would not look out of place in \u201cFifty Shades of Grey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Courtesans\u2014effectively high-priced 19th century call girls\u2014\u201cwere independent women who had become extremely successful and highly regarded in society and they became fashion icons and sort of celebrities,\u201d Rueger said.<\/p>\n

A gallery upstairs exposes life in brothels, including several paintings by the artist whose name is most closely linked to Parisian nightlife\u2014Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat’s interesting about his work is that he depicts things as he sees them but also with compassion,\u201d Rueger said. \u201cHe doesn’t glamorize the subject, and he also, for example, shows scenes in the brothels of a very personal nature when the women are just waiting around or are waiting for doctor’s examinations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brothel section does not flinch from the seedy side of prostitution, including a sinister pastel and gouache work, \u201cThe Hour of the Flesh,\u201d by Emile Bernard. There’s a range of photographs from early pornography\u2014which often used prostitutes as models\u2014to police records and the scarred faces and bodies of syphilis victims.<\/p>\n

Finally, the exhibition moves on to the early 20th century and depictions of Paris prostitution by international artists drawn to the city including Pablo Picasso and Edvard Munch.<\/p>\n

There are a handful of Van Gogh paintings, although he is not well-known for depicting prostitution and ultimately turned his back on Paris’ bustling nightlife.<\/p>\n

But the museum dedicated to Van Gogh is still a fitting host for the exhibition, in part because the Dutch capital is still home to one of the world’s best-known red light districts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Van Gogh museum is in Amsterdam and of course we cannot deny that Amsterdam also has a certain reputation on that subject,\u201d Rueger said with a smile.<\/p>\n

The exhibition \u201cEasy Virtue. Prostitution in French Art, 1850-1910\u201d opens Friday and runs until June 19. Tickets to the Van Gogh Museum cost 17 euros ($19) for adults. Children under 18 get in for free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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