The male nude has been a traditional art subject for as long as its female counterpart, yet few shows are entirely dedicated to a genre, seemingly deemed too sexy, or controversial. Things are changing, though, and this autumn, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris is inaugurating “Masculin/Masculin. L'homme nu dans l'art de 1800 à nos jours,” an exhibition which showcases over two centuries of male nudes from artists ranging from Jacques-Louis David to Kehinde Wiley. Modern Painters caught up with its curator, the museum’s president Guy Cogeval, to discuss taboos, the gay marriage debate, and his ambitions for one of France’s best-loved institutions.
Could you tell me about the starting point for this exhibition?
Actually, for about 15 years I’ve been meaning to do a show on this subject and thought about it without ever putting anything down on paper. And then a year ago, I opened up the newspaper and saw that in Vienna [at the Leopold Museum], there was a big show on the male nude. I said to myself: they’ve really got guts, this is extraordinary, and I should finally do it. This was last fall.
So it happened very quickly.
I spoke with two curators and we decided to start working on it last December-January. The Vienna show was very interesting, and it gets credit for being the first one to tackle this subject head-on, but at the same time it was a bit unsatisfying. Some great painters were missing, such as the French neoclassical artists, especially David, Girodet, Guérin, Gros, Géricault, etc. And there were no French symbolists such as Gustave Moreau — we have a great symbolist collection at the Musée d’Orsay and symbolism is my specialty.
During my whole career, I’ve brought together people as different as Francis Bacon, Pierre et Gilles, Kehinde Wiley — whom I’ve known for about a year or two — and none of them were in the Vienna exhibition. The exhibition came together very quickly because there were very few museums in the world who refused us loans. Everyone thought that doing a show on the male nude at the Musée d’Orsay was unexpected and that it had to be done someday.
You mentioned that the Vienna show had guts. Do you think that the male nude is still taboo?
I definitely think that there is still a taboo. I wouldn’t have believed it a year ago, but when you’ve been in Paris for six months with the city in havoc from the dispute between supporters of and opponents to gay marriage, you realize that there are still a lot of taboos to be abolished in French society, even though we thought that it was the most liberal and open society in the world.
Given the political context, is this an activist exhibition?
People can take it as they wish. I’m actually not a born activist, but in this very particular perspective, I think something had to be done. We started to come up with the exhibition last year, so it was not at all about the fight over gay marriage. I would never have believed that some politicians on the right would have taken up the cause of opposing gay marriage, but what we saw in Paris is absolutely incredible. I think the rest of the world was amazed, because even in a conservative country like England, the law was voted last week without any big debate in parliament. It passed unanimously. Ten years ago, when gay marriage was legalized in Canada, it was all concluded in six months — both the right and the left voted for it. I don’t understand why the right [in France] chose to make it a divisive issue.
The situation gives this project a special resonance.
It’s always interesting when an exhibition is a little bit connected to what’s happening in the country at the same time. The Musée d’Orsay’s mission isn’t to put on shows for old ladies. At the same time, they’re a large portion of our audience and we’re able to do that kind of show, but we’re also able to do shows that take you by surprise, like Crime et Châtiment [Crime and Punishment] four years ago, which was a totally modern exhibition, and L’Ange du Bizarre [The Angel of the Odd] this year, which touched on really deep things, because we had an audience that was much younger. We even saw people in the Musée d’Orsay whom we never see — goths with big black shoes, people in the absolute weirdest outfits — and it was really good because the museum is not limited to a small elite group of people who know how to behave. Above all, it seemed important to me that a prominent classical museum would do a show like this. It shouldn’t be limited to contemporary art museums or galleries.
The Musée d’Orsay isn’t a contemporary art museum. Why did you decide to include art of today?
To show that it’s an issue that affects us deeply today. This isn’t obvious! The proof is that it was hard to agree on a poster for this show. I wanted to use the same poster as in Vienna. Actually, it’s one of only eight works that we have in common with the Leopold show: soccer players without their uniforms, an extraordinary photo by Pierre et Gilles (Vive la France, 2006). The city of Vienna made the Leopold cover up the three men’s genitals. That wouldn’t have flown in the Paris subway. In a way we censored ourselves from the beginning because we knew that people wouldn’t talk about the show if we used a provocative image. We chose a really great photo by Pierre et Gilles with a young man seen from behind, representing Mercury, alongside a really great neoclassical nude of Paris relaxing in nature, by [Jean-Baptiste Frédéric] Desmarais, who was a pupil of David.
What are some of the key works or moments in this show?
I’m very impressed by the works of François-Xavier Fabre, who was awarded the Prix de Rome around 1787. He was close to David and he broke with him because during the French Revolution he was more of a monarchist. In the 1770s, he did some academic nudes that are just amazing. When I showed them to Pierre et Gilles and Kehinde Wiley, they were amazed. We will also have Fabre’s Saint Sébastien (1789) and an important painting by Gustave Moreau, Prométhée (1868). Then we have some lesser-known works by David Hockney and George Platt-Lynes. I really wanted to have Platt-Lynes, who is one of the forerunners of homosexual photography. He worked in the ’30s and did some photos of ballets, especially a ballet by Stravinsky called “Orpheus,” in the ’40s, in Stravinsky’s very neoclassical vein. He took absolutely spectacular photos, but obviously he mostly took photos of half-naked, male dancers. George Platt-Lynes is Mapplethorpe’s role model. You can’t understand Mapplethorpe’s photos in the ’80s and ’90s without knowing the precedent of Platt-Lynes.
You’ve thought about this show for over 15 years. When you see the works together, are there still things that surprise you?
You know, I’m 58, and at my age, it’s hard to be surprised by anything. But I think that certain juxtapositions and clashes between photographs and very classical sculptures that we brought from museums in the provinces are going to be the big surprises of this show. We will also have better-known, more famous, and more directly exciting photos by David LaChapelle, who is very happy to be shown in this kind of exhibition.
Is the Musée d’Orsay going to continue emphasizing these trans-historical exhibitions in the future?
I’ve tried to do it as much as possible because that’s the way I see history, but we also need to do shows on a single artist from time to time. In fact, I’ll open this show that I curated, “Masculin/Masculin,” and the following week I’ll open another show at the Grand Palais that I put together with Isabelle Cahn, head curator at the Musée d’Orsay, on [Félix] Vallotton. It’s a single-artist show, and I hope it’s not too staid — I hope it will be a bit crazy, like “Masculin/Masculin.” A museum is supposed to surprise you. It’s not meant to doze off and imprison itself in certainties.