According to artist Miriam Cahn, the painting deals with the use of sexuality as a weapon of war and a crime against humanity.
Swiss artist By Miriam Cahn painting Fuck abstraction! was splattered with spray paint yesterday Sunday at the contemporary art museum of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
The painting shows a small human figure with his hands tied, kneeling in front of a faceless man with an erection. It looks like the character is being forced to give the man oral sex.
Pictures of the board started spreading on social media at the beginning of March, when it was interpreted as depicting sex between an adult and a child. Kohu was ready, said, among other things, the American visual arts magazine Art News (you will switch to another service).
Several children’s rights organizations have condemned the painting as child pornography and demanded that it be removed from the museum. Among them is a French member of parliament, a member of the children’s rights delegation Caroline Parmentier.
There has also been a legal battle to remove the sign, but France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d’Tat, rejected the claim in April.
Cahn wanted to treat rapes as war crimes
Artist Miriam Cahn has denied that the painting contains child pornography.
– They are not children. “This painting is about the use of sexuality as a weapon of war, a crime against humanity,” Cahn said in a statement in March.
In the exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo, there is a text next to the painting explaining that the work is related to the war in Ukraine.
– Fuck abstraction! was made during the Ukrainian war and after that pictures of mass graves in Bucha, as well as pictures of the rape of countless women and men, have been transmitted to the world.
An older male person destroyed the board
The artist’s assurances have not silenced the criticism. Yesterday, a man, who has been described as an old man, daubed the blackboard with purple spray paint. The man was immediately arrested by the museum’s security guards, and he was handed over to the police.
According to the source of the AFP news agency, the man scratched the board because he did not like the sexual depiction of a child and an adult on the board. The man does not belong to any activist group.
President of France Emmanuel Macron has condemned the vandalism against the board today, Monday.
– An attack on a work of art is against our values. In France, art is always free and respect for the creation of art is guaranteed, Macron wrote on the messaging service Twitter.
The Palais de Tokyo says that together with Miriam Cahn, they have decided that the painting will be displayed until the end of the exhibition, even though it has been vandalized. So far, 80,000 guests have visited the exhibition.