L'Origine

Lilianne Milgrom

Description

Winner of 5 major book awards, including the Publishers Weekly U.S. 2021 Selfies Award for Best Adult Fiction and winner of the IndieReader 2021 Discovery Award

“L’Origine got me hooked—what a story! Milgrom brings the reader right along on her adventures as a copyist of one of the most well-known paintings in all the world.” —Harriet Welty Rochefort, author of French Fried, French Toast, Joie de Vivre, and Final Transgression

The riveting odyssey of one of the world’s most scandalous works of art.

In 1866, maverick French artist Gustave Courbet painted one of the most iconic images in the history of art: a sexually explicit portrait of a woman’s exposed genitals. Audaciously titled L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World), the scandalous painting was kept hidden for a century and a half. Today, it hangs in the world-renowned Orsay Museum in Paris, viewed by millions of visitors a year.

As the first artist authorized by the Orsay Museum to re-create Courbet’s The Origin of the World, author Lilianne Milgrom was thrust into the painting’s intimate orbit, spending six weeks replicating every fold, crevice, and pubic hair. The experience inspired her to share her story and the painting’s riveting clandestine history with readers beyond the confines of the art world.

L’Origine is an entertaining and superbly researched work of historical fiction that traces the true story of the painting’s unlikely tale of survival, replete with French revolutionaries, Turkish pashas, and nefarious Nazi captains. But L’Origine is more than a riveting romp through history—it also sheds light on society’s complex relationship with the female body.

Sujets

• Controversial
• Feminist
• Literary
• Historical
• Controversia
• Art history
• History of art
• Literature
• List of French artists
• Erotic art
• General officer
• Historical fiction
• Feminism
• Gustave Courbet
• General
• History
• Paris
• Fiction
• ART

Informations

• Publié par: Girl Friday Books
• Date de parution: 28 septembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781954854154
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Praise for L’Origine
“In recounting the secret history of L’Origine , Lilianne Milgrom offers us an entertaining, provocative read, which will continue to intrigue us and invite speculation, long after we have turned the last page.”
— California Review of Books
“ L’Origine got me hooked—what a story! Milgrom brings the reader right along on her adventures as a copyist of one of the most well-known paintings in all of France and maybe even the world.”
—Harriet Welty Rochefort, author of French Fried , French Toast , Joie de Vivre , and Final Transgression
“ L’Origine is a testament to the wealth of talent that deserves wider recognition in the publishing world.”
—Cevin Bryerman, CEO and publisher of Publishers Weekly
“ L’Origine is, indeed, an apt title for Lilianne Milgrom’s debut novel, since it is the painting itself— L’Origine du monde —that is the heroine of this vividly written, well-researched, and highly compelling book. Part historical fiction, part personal journey, L’Origine tells the story of ‘the world’s most erotic masterpiece’ and its effect on those who tried to capture it, in one way or another—including Milgrom herself. The notorious little painting is, above all, a survivor. Its page-turning odyssey, told in richly textured prose, is an original story well worth reading.”
—Barbara Linn Probst, awarding-winning author of Queen of the Owls: A Novel
“What a gorgeous, captivating novel: a tour de force! Who knew that a painting’s provenance could make for such a profoundly moving and thought-provoking page-turner? I couldn’t read fast enough and at the same time didn’t want to reach the end. Milgrom has written a masterpiece worthy of the iconic Gustave Courbet painting that lies at the heart of L’Origine .”
—Joan Dempsey, author of the award-winning novel This Is How It Begins
“What an enterprising choice for a story by an artist who was simply bewitched by her subject. The book ends up being part mystery, history lesson, personal quest, and an examination of what sexuality is all about.”
—Peter Eisner, veteran foreign correspondent, author, and winner of the Christopher Award
“Lilianne Milgrom has produced a vivid and well-told novel that tells the story of one of the more notorious paintings in the history of art. Immaculately researched and full of verve, the book is a real achievement, one which I read with fascination and admiration. Milgrom is an artist as well as a novelist, and her story of Courbet’s masterpiece is prefaced with a tale of her own: how she spent several weeks in the Musée d’Orsay making a painted copy of Courbet’s original L’Origine du monde painting, under the curious and sometimes lascivious eye of other museum goers. When the narrative transports the reader back to nineteenth-century Paris and into Courbet’s studio, we are already primed in the intimate and complex processes that the act of looking initiates. The author clearly has a deep admiration for Courbet and his infamous painting. One of the pleasures of the novel is that there is still room for a book that celebrates the creative and erotic possibilities generated between an artist, their model, and the centuries-old act of looking. Five stars.”
—Christopher P. Jones, historian, art critic, and author
“There’s nothing like a good story to grip a reader, and Milgrom’s own tale of witnessing and emulating Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde is the perfect way to get into—and attempt to understand—this infamous masterpiece. Highly recommended for art history aficionados, Francophiles, and history and biography fans. It exposes readers who stand outside the normal confines of the art world to the fascinating world beyond the frame.”
—Jennifer Dasal, podcast host of ArtCurious and author of ArtCurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History
“Milgrom’s novel is amazingly researched and a seamless mix of fiction and true history. She has written an extremely engaging book, like a thriller. I thoroughly enjoyed the parallel between the painting’s odyssey and the condition of women throughout history.”
—Sylvia A. Rodríguez, psychoanalyst in the Lacanian field and cofounder of the Australian Center for Psychoanalysis
“Throughout history, female sexuality has been regarded as ugly, repulsive, and shameful whilesimultaneously revered to the point of idolization. Lilianne Milgrom’s intimate experience with Gustave Courbet’s scandalous painting gives testament to the classic divide of women’s cultural representation.”
—Dr. Bella Ellwood-Clayton, sexual anthropologist, author, and TED Talk presenter



This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2021 Lilianne Milgrom All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Girl Friday Books™, Seattle
Produced by Girl Friday Productions www.girlfridayproductions.com
Design: Lilianne Milgrom Project management: Devon Fredericksen Cover image: Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art / H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-954854-14-7 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-954854-15-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021906019

For Mira

Men dream of women.
Women dream of themselves being dreamt of.
Men look at women.
Women watch themselves being looked at.
—John Berger
I feel there is something unexplored about women that only a woman can explore.
—Georgia O’Keefe

Prologue

The Copyist

Paris, Winter 2011 The Orsay Museum
I t stopped me dead in my tracks. Granted, I was in Paris, but nonetheless, this wasn’t something you’d expect to see in one of the most celebrated museums in the world. Prominently displayed on its own dedicated wall and hanging at eye level was a realistically rendered, X-rated, peep-show perspective of a woman’s exposed genitals. Not a fig leaf in sight. The parted thighs drew my eye toward the riotous pubic bush just left of dead center. The vulva was split asunder by a palette-knife slash of scarlet. A shadowed ravine divided the buttocks into two creamy rounded orbs and only a single breast, crested by a blush-colored nipple, peeked out from beneath rumpled sheets. No face, no legs, no arms. Just lady bits.
I knew that staring was rude, but what could possibly be ruder than what I was staring at? Even sans the strategically angled museum lights and the dusky aubergine backdrop, the painting was riveting. For its modest size, it packed a monumental punch, yet it exuded dignity and reverence—a fitting homage to nature’s inspired genius. The tasteless reproductions stamped onto T-shirts and mugs bore little resemblance to the original painting before me.
Stifled guffaws reminded me that I wasn’t the only voyeur. People were milling about trying not to gape, while others took a good long gawk and scurried off like lecherous patrons at a girlie show on the south side of town. I felt inexplicably affronted on behalf of the headless, nameless model. By contrast, she seemed unfazed and unabashed. The more I gazed, the less she appeared constrained by the ornately carved and gilded frame that confined her. One could almost hear her sigh as she stretched her invisible arms lazily overhead and settled her naked rump deeper into the white bedclothes. The word languishing came to mind. I bent forward to read the caption.
L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World), 1866 Gustave Courbet
I was contemplating the pairing of the salacious subject with its provocative title when my reverie was interrupted by a young fellow standing next to me, shaking his head in equal parts disbelief and glee. He too seemed hypnotized by the painting.
“That’s gotta be the first beaver shot in the history of art!” he finally announced to no one in particular. He had a point. There was no disputing that Gustave Courbet had created an unprecedented image for his time. The explanatory wall text informed me that the painting had been hidden or thought missing for close to a century and a half and that it measured a mere eighteen by twenty-two inches. As an artist, I felt sheepish about my ignorance apropos the iconic vulvic portrait. What had motivated Gustave Courbet to paint The Origin of the World and why the eccentric perspective? Who was the model? Clearly, I should’ve been paying more attention during Art History 101 instead of mooning over that cute art student in the back row. Tom? Or was it Trevor? Back then, the painting’s whereabouts were still unknown. Where had it been all that time?
Glancing at my watch, I realized that the afternoon was slipping by. I’d just arrived in Paris on an extended artist residency and was visiting the Orsay to get the creative juices flowing. It was time to expand the aperture beyond female sex organs and take advantage of the museum’s superlative art collection. I stole one last look at L’Origine before meandering through the museum’s galleries and corridors brimming with the choicest paintings, sculptures, and objets d’art from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Yet Courbet’s The Origin of the World had exacted a strange hold over me. Not even my favorite psychedelic Van Gogh portraits, nor Gauguin’s bare-chested Tahitian beauties, could totally erase the lingering afterimage of L’Origine du monde . From the moment I laid eyes on Gustave Courbet’s sensational masterpiece, I was smitten. The audacity, the beauty, the fearlessness of it!
I felt a little frisson work