Van Gogh Museum Shows Paris Prostitution Through Paintings

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Models pose next to a 19th century bed of a French courtesan during a photo call for the upcoming... Read more

 (AP) — The 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?

"Why is he there? What's he doing? Was he a member of staff of the Paris Opera? It's possible," said Prof. Richard Thomson, one of the curators of a new exhibition at Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum. "Or was he the lover of one of the dancers? Somebody who kept a dancer? These are the things we don't know."

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.

The exhibition was a hit at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris before traveling to Amsterdam. "Sex sells," says Van Gogh Museum director Axel Rueger.

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.

Divided into four themes, it first explores the age of ambiguity as Paris grew into a center 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.

"Hierarchies disappeared. People often slipped into unemployment and had nothing to back them up, so prostitution was flourishing," said Thomson, the Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh. "People were uncertain about identity. Ambiguity made questions get raised: Who's who? Will she? Won't she? Is she, isn't she?"

The exhibition then looks at Parisian prostitution's superstars — the courtesans — through ostentatious portraits and some of their belongings, including a walking cane that hid a dainty — if a whip can be dainty — "cat-o-six tails" that would not look out of place in "Fifty Shades of Grey."

Courtesans — effectively high-priced 19th century call girls — "were independent women who had become extremely successful and highly regarded in society and they became fashion icons and sort of celebrities," Rueger said.

A gallery upstairs exposes life in brothels, including several paintings by the artist whose name is most closely linked to Parisian nightlife — Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

"What's interesting about his work is that he depicts things as he sees them but also with compassion," Rueger said. "He 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."

The brothel section does not flinch from the seedy side of prostitution, including a sinister pastel and gouache work, "The Hour of the Flesh," by Emile Bernard. There's a range of photographs from early pornography — which often used prostitutes as models — to police records and the scarred faces and bodies of syphilis victims.

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.

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.

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.

"The Van Gogh museum is in Amsterdam and of course we cannot deny that Amsterdam also has a certain reputation on that subject," Rueger said with a smile.

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The exhibition "Easy Virtue. Prostitution in French Art, 1850-1910" 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.

Picasso Museum In Paris To Open After Renovations In September 2014

Contributed by Jamey Keaten, AP.

This photo provided Monday May 12, 2014 by the Picasso Museum shows the facade of the museum. Paris proudly hosted Picasso for decades. But two controversies around the artist’s legacy are now haunting French officials. One centers on the Paris Picasso Museum, where renovations have dragged for five years amid accusations of mismanagement, labor problems and clashes between the artist’s family and the French government. The re-opening has now been pushed back until September _ after the summer tourist season. The other is about the fate of a Left Bank studio where Picasso lived and worked for 19 years, and painted his famed anti-war opus "Guernica” in 1937. A historic preservation panel is meeting Tuesday to decide what’s next. (AP Photo/Beatrice Hatala, Musee Picasso 2014)

 Paris proudly hosted Picasso for decades, but two controversies around the artist's legacy are now haunting French officials.

One centers on the Paris Picasso Museum, where renovations have dragged for five years amid accusations of mismanagement, labor problems and clashes between the artist's family and the French government. The re-opening will be in September.

The other is about the fate of a Left Bank studio where Picasso lived and worked for 19 years, and painted his famed anti-war opus "Guernica" in 1937. A historic preservation panel is meeting Tuesday to decide what's next.

As with many of the Cubist great's works, little is as it first appears.

A legal group has owned the 17th-century manor containing the studio since before Picasso worked there, and now wants to renovate it - perhaps as a luxury hotel.

Some high-profile art lovers are up in arms and say the studio deserves state protection from re-development. The case has raised questions about whether the birthplaces of great art - not just the works - deserve state protection from re-development as part of national heritage.

The Culture Ministry last year ordered a one-year pause to any development while officials consider the implications. That expires in July.

The panel meeting Tuesday may put it on a national register of historic sites, which could make any redevelopment more costly and time-consuming at the least.

A group of artists and actors including Britain's Charlotte Rampling have signed on to a petition decrying any possible redevelopment.

Pablo Picasso spent 19 years living and working in the Hotel de Savoie, as the manor is known. A plaque out front notes how "Guernica," his famed painting decrying Spanish Civil War bloodshed, was painted there in 1937.

Whatever officials decide, the redevelopment "will in no way impact the historic character of the building," said Alexandra Romano, a spokeswoman for the site's owners. She declined to specify the "several" development plans being considered, adding, "This battle doesn't honor the legacy of 'Guernica'."

Alain Casabona, an official at the state-backed National Committee for Arts Education, says the owners want to make the building a hotel. The committee enjoyed free office space in the studio for a decade.

Casabona was quoted in Le Parisien newspaper as suggesting that the birthplace of "Guernica" might become a "jacuzzi suite." He later told The Associated Press he was being provocative with that remark.

Two French cultural officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said the studio bears no visible traces of Picasso's presence. One noted that the artist was evicted in 1955 for not paying his rent.

Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti's office said last week that she favors stronger protections for the site, and instructed envoys to the preservation panel to vote to put it on a historic register.

Filippetti has a bigger public headache when it comes to Picasso.

Claude Picasso, the painter's son, has spoken out this month to denounce delays in reopening Paris' Picasso Museum, one of the city's premier art attractions.

The 52-million-euro (about $72 million) renovation of the Hotel de Sale, in the celebrated Marais district, is set to double the possible number of visitors and allow for the presentation of 400 artworks in 37 rooms, the ministry said.

Speaking to Le Figaro earlier this month, Claude Picasso said Filippetti had told him that troubles getting security guards in place, as required under French regulations, were behind the delay. Picasso said he couldn't understand that, and that he had the impression France "doesn't care" about him or his father.

Filippetti's ministry then lashed out in a statement at "erroneous" media reports about the delay, and called on "everyone to get past personal interests" and get enthusiastic about the upcoming reopening.

"No polemic will sway the state from its mission" to protect and display national heritage, and to ensure proper workplace conditions and completion of the renovation, the statement said.

The museum's beauty and rich collections, it said, will "in no way suffer from an opening in September."