Painting of vagina by French artist Gustave Courbet sprayed with ‘MeToo’ graffiti

Two women have sprayed the words “MeToo” on a 19th-century painting of a woman’s vagina by French artist Gustave Courbet in a stunt by a performance artist, a museum and the artist said. “The Origin of the World”, a nude painted from 1866, was protected by a “glass pane” and the police were on site to assess the damage, the Centre Pompidou in the north-eastern city of Metz told AFP on Monday. The work had been on loan to the Centre Pompidou-Metz from the Musee d’Orsay in Paris as part of an exhibition centred on French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, who once owned the painting. Metz prosecutor Yves Badorc said two women born in 1986 and 1993 had been arrested after five works in total, including Courbet’s nude, had been sprayed with the words “MeToo”. A third person – who has not been detained – is believed to have stolen another artwork, he said. The stolen piece – red embroidery on white material by French artist Annette Messager – is called “I Think Therefore I Suck”. French-Luxembourgish performance artist Deborah de Robertis told AFP she had organised the spray painting in red, carried out by two other people, as part of...