13 Feb Scandals and Secrets of Art Museums
The world’s museums are full of scandals and secrets. John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, known simply as Madame X, is a great example. When it
was unveiled at the 1884 Paris Salon, it caused such a scandal that Sargent’s career was almost destroyed. Who after all would want to hire a portrait-painter who caused scandals at the Salon? It was also damaging, of course, for Gautreau’s reputation as a society beauty. Her family begged Sargent to withdraw the painting from the Salon, but he refused. After the Salon, however, he repainted the detail that had caused the biggest scandal. In the original portrait, her right-hand shoulder strap hung loose down her shoulder. Sargent put it back up and after the family refused payment, he kept the painting on display in his studio for 20 years. He only sold it to the Metropolitan Museum in 1905, by which time he considered it his best painting ever.
Sargent’s repainted Madame X
What bothered them?
It’s a little hard for a 21st century person to grasp what the problem was. After all, even if her shoulder strap was down, that gown is clearly held up by plenty of whalebone: a wardrobe malfunction of a modern kind was technically impossible. But to understand, you have to realize that a portrait is not a snapshot. It is meant to convey the person’s character symbolically. So what did the fallen strap mean, symbolically? It seemed to indicate that Madame Gautreau slipped casually out of her gowns (or something like that).
I could go on. But instead I want to make a more general point. We remember this scandal, because it happened—and because it seems silly to us now. Similarly, people in Boston remember the scandal about Frederick MacMonnies Bacchante and Faun (also at the Metropolitan) when it was unveiled at the Boston Public Library in 1894. But what I would like to suggest is that artists are constantly on the verge of creating a scandal. They are always pushing the edge of what is acceptable in their culture, hoping to titillate, to shock—without, hopefully, creating a brouhaha.
Ancient Scandal
So while pieces that caused scandals are not too common, museums are full of pieces intended to titillate and scandalize. Scandals and secrets are everywhere. A great example of a statue that clearly pushed boundaries is the Aphrodite Knidia: the first fully nude female statue in the Western tradition, made in the 4th century BC by the Athenian sculptor Praxiteles. Although it vanished in a fire in 475 AD, the statue survives today in many copies or versions, such as the
Medici Venus in the Uffizi Galleries. The ancient Greeks weren’t into prudery, but it had taken a century-long strip-tease for a sculptor to arrive at full female nudity, and the titillation this caused comes down to us in the many stories and poems about the statue, such as an epigram in which Aphrodite exclaims “Oh no, where did Praxiteles see me naked?”
Renaissance secrets
And some artworks are even cheekier. Take for instance Caravaggio’s “The Musicians.” Now look at the central boy’s face. Is he wearing rouge? Are his eyebrows plucked? And what does the expression of his mouth imply? I suppose it’s possible that he’s made-up like an angel and singing, but it’s certainly also possible that he’s a less respectable kind of boy. And Caravaggio has snuck him in to a painting of “musicians.” Or at least, although Caravaggio got into a lot of serious trouble, we never hear that anyone complained about the homoerotic implications of his paintings.
Caravaggio’s Musicians–or Boy Whores?
But that’s no reason not to notice them today! Because if we recognize the scandals and secrets of the works in the museum, it all comes to life for us! Want to find out more? Follow our Facebook page, join our mailing list, and if you’re in New York or Boston, come on our tours, such as the Sexy Secrets of the Metropolitan this Sunday….
