“The origin of the world” by Gustave Courbet: realism and erotism

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the
painting L’origine du monde (“The origin of the
world”) by the master of realism Gustave Cour-
bet (1819-1877), setting connections with his
social and artistic context. Realized in a privile-
ged moment in the history of Western art and
society, when they were being distangled from
their traditional forms, “The origin of the world”
(1866) expresses the innovative character of its
time through the originality of both its form and
theme: in this painting, realism and sexuality oc-
cupy the center of the artistic representation. The
innovation realised by Courbet’s oeuvre is develo-
pped here as an important piece of the formation
process of what Foucault named “the sexuality
gadget”. It is argued here that a pictorial or vi-
sual knowledge joined the medical, educational
and juridical knowledge that in the 18th and 19th
centuries have articulated and produced a scien-
ce about sexuality, which deeply reorganized the
ways through which it should be enunciated and,
especially, visualized in the modern societies.