L'Origine du Monde

"L'Origine du Monde" (1866) - Gustave Courbet

Don't you just love it when art is translated into pornography by a mere social network, when cultural heritage is made out to be something offensive...
There is an epidemic spreading throughout Facebook: intolerance.
The cause: L'Origine du Monde, Gustave Courbet's 1866 work of art depicting his vision of the origin of the world.
A soon as a person posts a representation of this work on Facebook, their profiles disappear.
Though some people might find this piece "shocking", it still remains non the less a work of art and Facebook's actions simply underline a clear lack of culture of behalf of the people moderating it's content.

What I find offensive is Facebook's mistaking and acknowledging a key pieces of France's artistic legacy as "vulgar erotica".
When ignorance overcomes art, history and respect, there is a problem.

Well done Facebook!
I wasn't aware that the Musée d'Orsay (where this painting hangs in Paris and where I saw it for the first time when I was 7 years old) was a temple of pornography.
It's strange though, why do schools take children there on class outings...?
Oh yes thats right, to corrupt their young minds and turn them into sexual deviants!

Or maybe it's because there is absolutely nothing offensive about "L'Origine du Monde", nor the will to share the history, context and message of this powerful piece of art.

Half of the world has a vagina, and I personally find Courbet's work to be a beautiful message to women, in no way demeaning or abusive.

He demonstrates in the simplest and most direct of ways that we, women (or more precisely, our female organs), are the origin of the world. We all come from the same place he depicts.

The message of this painting is one of the most beautiful odes to the female species ever made.

How could anyone find that offensive.

Why plant the idea that nudity is "wrong"?

There is nothing more natural than a naked body, why fear it.
Here's a question Mark Zuckerberg, do you even know who Gustave Courbet is?
Rather than being dictatorial bigots and simply disabling profiles without any possible dialogue, why not simply send a message saying "this work of art goes against our nudity policily therefore please be so kind as to remove it". Though it remains ridiculous, the simple act of entering into a dialogue on the subject would show some form of human intelligence reassuring us on the state of the mindless drones behind Facebook.

Dialogue is the road to enlightenment.