Ambiguities of Prostitutes of Paris
PARIS — A skirt lifted above her ankle. A beauty mark painted on her cheek. A direct gaze. Sitting alone over a drink in a cafe.
These were some of the clues that a woman in 19th- century Paris just might be a streetwalker.
Ambiguity about prostitutes in the public space is a central theme of “Splendor and Misery: Images of Prostitution 1850-1910,” which runs through January 17 at the Musée d’Orsay here. Taking its title from Honoré de Balzac’s mid-19th- century Comédie Humaine novel “The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans,” it is touted as the first major exhibition on the artistic representation of prostitution in Paris.
Paris during this period was a city in transformation. Its population of one million in 1850 almost doubled by 1870 as men and women abandoned the countryside for this capital. Traditional social structures and codes of behavior shattered. The rise of a wealthy urban class through trade and industry meant plenty of money to spend.
In this frenzied era of commerce, prostitution — already legal and considered a necessary evil — exploded.
Prostitution became so central to the artistic imagination that the poet Charles Baudelaire wrote in his personal journal: “What is art? Prostitution.”
“Why was prostitution such a big theme for artists?” said Richard Thomson of the Edinburgh College of Art and a curator of the exhibition. “There was the sexual aspect, of course. But there was another reason. The city was slippery. Everything was speeding up, becoming more commercial, more ambiguous, more of a spectacle. How can we be sure this person filled a certain role and not another? Who was who? Was she or wasn’t she? These questions disturbed and fascinated artists.”
In this show, the museum has brought together masterpieces by artists of the day, including Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Manet, Edvard Munch, Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso.
The artists explored only the world of female prostitution; male prostitution was treated as a homosexual act subject to criminal prosecution. However, the exhibition includes police reports and photographs of men together in suggestive poses.
There are objects of the trade, including tokens paid by clients to prostitutes in lieu of cash; brothel guides for tourists; and business cards advertising ambiguous services.
Several bordello paintings by Toulouse- Lautrec are here, the women depicted neither as victims nor femmes fatales, but as working women.
The exhibition includes the 1892 painting “Sur le Boulevard (La Parisienne),” by Louis Valtat, of a heavily made-up woman wearing flat black tie shoes and a long black boa. She is lifting her skirt to reveal her ankle, a sign that she is a prostitute.
The exhibition also explores the world of courtesans, the top of the hierarchy. These were kept women who were showered with gifts and housed in luxurious mansions. A painting of Valtesse de la Bigne, one of Paris’s most celebrated courtesans, portrays her in a ruffled white dress, a half-smile on her face. There is nothing to suggest she sells herself. In a nearby display case, however, is her walking stick and a whip with six thin metal strands that can be neatly hidden inside.
With the advent of photography came a new medium to represent prostitution. Photographers were prohibited from working inside brothels, so they recreated these scenes in their studios. The photos were sold illegally, and anonymously.
Behind red velvet curtains are two rooms off limits to those under 18. In them hang pornographic photographs of heterosexual and homosexual activity and women in various sexual poses.
Most jarring in the show are 19101912 photographs of women whose faces and bodies have been disfigured by syphilis.
The show ends with the moralistic portrayal of prostitution by early-20th- century artists. France was by then cursed with high rates of alcoholism and syphilis, and prostitutes came to be considered disease- carrying corrupters of men.