The Escape from the Louvre
huile sur toile, 90×116 cm
In painting today, the nude is not in vogue. Photography, however, does not shy away from it. But aside from a few exceptions, like the magnificent nudes by Bettina Rheims, mannequins have replaced models in front of the camera, adhering to an aesthetic of line that often resembles automotive design. Is it any wonder that the models rebel? Thus, a most strange event occurred in Paris on the night of September 15 to 16, so unusual that despite the silence imposed by the Louvre’s management, I cannot resist the urge to publish it. Indeed, that night, outsmarting all the security systems of one of the most famous museums in the world, a group of models escaped to protest in the streets of the capital against the invisibility imposed on them by contemporary painting. A few rare Parisians witnessed it but did not dare to speak out for fear of being deemed crazy. One of them even claimed to have seen the Venus of Urbino, which seems impossible since it is in the Uffizi in Florence…
