The painting, titled fuck abstraction !, appears in a Cahn show set to finish its controversial run on May 14. Cahn and the museum had made clear that the work was a response to human rights abuses in Ukraine, but conservative politicians and children’s rights groups had claimed it promoted pedophilia.

In the work, Cahn represents a smaller figure whose hands are bound performing a sex act on a taller one. She said she had painted it after seeing reports of mass graves in Bucha and rapes by Russian soldiers in 2022. Certain politicians and organizations attempted to sue for its removal, though the French Council of State found that the painting could be exhibited on the basis that it did not represent pedophilia and that it qualified as freedom of expression.

According to the Agence France-Presse, on Sunday afternoon, a visitor that the Palais de Tokyo described as an “elderly person” sprayed purple paint on fuck abstraction ! The man was “unhappy with the sexual staging of a child and an adult represented, according to him,” the museum told AFP.

Following the vandalism, two rooms of the exhibition were closed off to the public.

Rima Abdul Malak, France’s culture minister, told Franceinfo, “It’s a direct attack on freedom of expression, which is quite serious.”

Franceinfo, which first reported the news, published a picture of what appeared to be fuck abstraction ! in its vandalized state. The painting seems to have been splashed with purple that now runs down portions of it. According to the publication, the man who vandalized the work had hidden the paint in a medicine bottle.

Guillaume Désanges, president of the Palais de Tokyo, told AFP that fuck abstraction ! would remain on view through the end of the show’s run in agreement with the artist. So far, 80,000 people have seen the exhibition.

On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron even weighed in on the situation, tweeting, “To attack a work is to attack our values. In France, art is always free and respect for cultural creation is guaranteed.”

Update, 5/8/23, 9:45 a.m.: A statement from Emmanuel Macron has been added to this article.

The council’s ruling affirmed a prior decision that a lower court had made in March. The legal matter continued, however, after several children’s rights groups appealed it, forcing a higher court to look once more at the case.

Cahn’s painting, titled fuck abstraction !, appears in her current survey at the Palais de Tokyo, one of the largest solo presentations of her work to date. Her paintings are widely known in the European art scene, with her work memorably appearing in last year’s Venice Biennale.

In the painting, a small figure whose hands are bound is shown kneeling and fellating a larger, more muscular person. Cahn stated that she painted the work in response to atrocities being committed in Ukraine. Specifically, she was reacting to news reports on mass graves in Bucha, as well as the rapes of women and children by Russian soldiers.

“The repetition of violence during wars is not intended to shock but to denounce,” Cahn said.

The French Council of State said in its decision that the work was clearly contextualized, both by materials that the Palais de Tokyo had released alongside it and by other works in the show that also dealt with human rights violations in Ukraine.

“Under these conditions, the judge in chambers considers that the hanging of this painting, in a place dedicated to contemporary creation and known as such, and accompanied by a detailed contextualization, does not cause serious and manifestly illegal harm the best interests of children or the dignity of human persons,” the council wrote.

In March, certain organizations had lobbied a lower court to have the painting removed from the show. The lower court denied to do so for similar reasons to the ones cited by the Council of State. Sylvie Vidal, the judge behind the case, stated, “The painting is not child pornography. The fundamental freedoms at stake are freedom of expression and freedom of creation.”

Even after that decision, however, many continued to decry the work. A director of Forum of Democracy, a right-wing party in the Netherlands, claimed in a video making the rounds on Twitter that the work was an example of “the banalization of pedophilia.”

With the outcry continuing to grow, some of the top museum directors in France signed an open letter published in Le Monde last week in which they apologized for having remained silent on the matter for so long. They stated that the polemic had confused activism with censorship—and said this was a dangerous, slippery slope that had potential impact beyond France. They brought up the recent controversy over Michelangelo’s David, waged at a Florida charter school, as an example.

“Our responsibility is not to censor or allow censorship, but to fight to offer a space of freedom, of questioning, so that art can always find places where it can flourish without fear,” the directors wrote. “Even more than censorship, we must fear self-censorship. Museums must be havens of emancipation and intelligence in a time of polarization of opinions and media lynchings. If we let the fear of controversy and attacks take over the interest of the works or projects that are offered to us, then we would renounce the principle on which our open societies are based.”

Among the signatories were Laurent Le Bon, president of the Centre Pompidou; Chris Dercon, head of the Grand Palais; and Christophe Leribault, the leader of the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie.

In a statement on Friday, the Palais de Tokyo addressed the Council of State’s decision, saying that it “regrets that the affair gave place to the instrumentalization of a work of art.” The museum noted that 70,000 people had seen the Cahn exhibition, which runs through May 14.

The work, titled fuck abstraction !, is a new painting produced by the Swiss artist Miriam Cahn, who is currently the subject of one of the biggest shows of her career at the museum. The painting features a muscular figure being fellated by a smaller one whose hands are bound.

A statement from Cahn that is included in the show notes that the work is meant as a commentary on humans rights crimes being enacted by Russians in Ukraine. She further stated that she had painted the work after seeing images of mass graves in Bucha, as well as reports of rapes of women and children in Ukraine.

Of the painting, Cahn has said, “this is a person whose hands are tied, raped before being killed and thrown into the street. The repetition of violence during wars is not intended to shock but to denounce.”

But many conservatives in France chose to view the painting otherwise, claiming that the smaller figure is a minor and that, in showing the painting, Cahn and the Palais de Tokyo are encouraging the exploitation of children. As a result, the painting has gone viral on social media, where posts decrying the work have racked up thousands of likes.

In one popular tweet, Caroline Parmentier, a politician who supported the ultra-conservative Marine Le Pen, wrote, “In the name of child protection, as a member of the Delegation for Children’s Rights, I ask the Minister of Culture that it be taken down.”

The furor surrounding fuck abstraction ! has grown so loud that even Rima Abdul Malak, the French cultural minister, has spoken out to defend it on the basis of freedom of expression.

Six children’s rights organizations subsequently lobbied a French court to have the Palais de Tokyo remove the painting from Cahn’s show. The case was heard on Monday, and no less than 24 hours later, the court decided in favor of the Palais de Tokyo and Cahn, ruling that the painting could remain on view.

“This work cannot be understood outside of its context and the work of the artist Miriam Cahn, which aims to denounce the horrors of war, as recalled in the presentation document of the event distributed to the public,” wrote the judge Sylvie Vidal, according to Libération.

Vidal also more bluntly spoke out against the claims that the painting sexualized children: “The painting is not child pornography. The fundamental freedoms at stake are freedom of expression and freedom of creation.”

The court also said that the Palais de Tokyo had done enough to prepare viewers for Cahn’s shocking art by providing warning texts.

Cahn’s work has frequently relied upon provocation to respond to conflicts around the world, antisemitism, racism, and other forms of prejudice. Sexual violence recurs in her work, often as a commentary on the horrors enacted upon women by men, and similar works have recently been seen in retrospectives across Europe and in editions of two of the world’s biggest art festivals, the Venice Biennale and Documenta.

Following the court’s decision, the Palais de Tokyo said it planned to keep fuck abstraction ! on view through the end of the show’s run in May. So far, according to the museum, 45,000 people have seen the show.

“The Palais de Tokyo regrets the instrumentalization of this work of art and the contempt for the fundamental role of museums around the world in the respect of human rights,” the museum said in a statement. “This painting was shown in context, distributed widely without authorization from either the artist or the Palais de Tokyo, in an erroneous and slanted manner, with thousands of internet users.”

The work, titled fuck abstraction !, was one of 200 on view in Cahn’s current exhibition at Paris’s Palais de Tokyo, one of her biggest shows to date. The survey followed her appearance in the Venice Biennale last summer.

Cahn’s work has regularly offered images of violence that provoke discomfort in viewers, with past paintings graphically depicting rapes that act as feminist critiques of the patriarchy and misuses of power. She has also centered wars in Bosnia, the Gulf, and elsewhere, often focusing her attention on people who are violated by those conflicts’ perpetrators.

Yet fuck abstraction !, which was intended as a protest against human rights crimes against the people of Ukraine, provoked controversy over something it did not actually portray.

The painting shows a muscular figure with an erect penis being fellated by a kneeling nude figure who is smaller and who has their hands bound. The muscular figure holds another person’s head using a free hand.

Within the Palais de Tokyo show, there is a text underlining that this work is about the war in Ukraine. “The painting fuck abstraction ! was made during the war in Ukraine and after that, images of the mass grave in Bucha have been broadcast as well as images of the rapes of numerous women and men,” the text reads, adding, “Miriam Cahn reacts on the spot to these images that circulate on social media and make a world tour.”

The text quotes Cahn herself as saying, “this is a person whose hands are tied, raped before being killed and thrown into the street. The repetition of violence during wars is not intended to shock but to denounce.”

Over the weekend, the French talk show host Karl Zéro, who has previously tweeted about what he calls “pedocrime,” posted a picture of the work to Twitter, calling it “intolerable.” In a follow-up tweet, Zéro wrote, “School groups visit this exhibition. Imagine the children’s questions when faced with this painting.”

Zéro’s original tweet has been liked nearly 11,000 times since it was first posted on March 5.

The Zéro tweet continued to circulate, with Laurent Ozon, a former adviser to the far-right politician Marine Le Pen, picking it up. “This trash,” he wrote.

These tweets and almost all others decrying the work did not mention the statement about the piece that appears on the gallery’s walls.

On Tuesday, the Palais de Tokyo responded directly to these claims, reiterating that the work is a response to real horrors taking place abroad and that it does not depict a pedophiliac act. The museum and its leaders said they “deplore” the circulation of fuck abstraction ! without sufficient context, calling the various posts about the painting “reactions of incomprehension.”

In a statement included within that release, Cahn said, “These are not children. This painting deals with how sexuality is used as a weapon in war, as a crime against humanity. The contrast between the two bodies shows the bodily power of the oppressor and the underdog, kneeling and oppressed, during war.”

The Palais de Tokyo encouraged viewers to consider how Cahn had previously used her work to empathize with victims of various conflicts.

Since 2003, the year that funding to maintain the piece dried up, its clock has been stopped, and the man has remained static. A quiet hush has since fallen over this sculpture by Jacques Monestier, titled Le Défenseur du temps (The Defender of Time).

All that has changed, however, thanks to artist Cyprien Gaillard.

For the past few years, Gaillard has been working to breathe new life into Monestier’s sculpture, which he has transported to Lafayette Anticipations for a moving show that also extends to the Palais de Tokyo. Once his exhibition ends, Gaillard will return Le Défenseur du temps to its former home, where it will once again creak and clang for unsuspecting passersby.

The curator of both shows, Lafayette Anticipations director Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, said in an interview with ARTnews, “When I invited him, he said, ‘Okay, I will basically make my work be material that’s consistent with the revival of an artwork by someone else. And I will dedicate all my budget to an outsider to public art that’s not loved anymore.’”

Those who have been following Gaillard’s work over the past decade will hardly be surprised to see him taking up a decaying structure and imbuing with new life. Past films by him have focused on Soviet-era apartment buildings and a stadium built for the Nazis in Berlin, mining them for whatever living history they may contain. It’s especially poignant given the restorations and refurbishments taking place at breakneck pace across Paris to buildings and other infrastructure ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games.

Yet his latest shows, which are together titled “HUMPTY \ DUMPTY,” push his interests in new and even more ambitious directions. They also bring Gaillard’s material closer to home.

Gaillard, who was born in Paris in 1980, used to encounter Le Défenseur du temps on visits to the Centre Pompidou. “He was always much more fascinated by this automaton than by what he would see at the museum,” Lamarche-Vadel said. “It was always of important figure for him, emotionally, in the place of his memory.”

A friend named Gaël Foucher used to accompany Gaillard on his visits to the Pompidou. Foucher died in an accident in 2013, and so the exhibition became a way to say goodbye to him for Gaillard, who dedicated the Lafayette Anticipations portion to his late friend. Lamarche-Vadel said doing so was in line with Gaillard’s ongoing interest in “immaterial memory.”

Much of Le Défenseur has been transported to Lafayette Anticipations, where it now hangs above viewers’ heads in the chilly, pristine building designed by star architect Rem Koolhaas that has just opened in time of Art Basel’s new Paris+ fair.  The setting could not be more different from Paris’s Beaubourg district, but it’s lent new warmth by the fact that, for the first time in years, the sculpture is set in motion, which contrasts with the mechanics that make it so that Gaillard has purposefully revealed in a floor cut-out and nearby sculptural vitrine.

A much different kind of Parisian detritus can be found at the Palais de Tokyo, where Gaillard is showing an installation called Love Locks (2022). The work features locks that appeared on bridges such as the Pont des Arts; lovers have historically marked up cheap locks with their initials, affixed them to the bridge, and thrown away the key in the Seine as a symbol of their enduring love. That has caused structural concerns for these bridges, one of which collapsed due to this weight several years ago; some of them have since been placed under Plexiglas to prevent lovers undertaking a timeworn tradition. Gaillard has acquired these locks on loan from the City of Paris and placed them in sacks that weigh tons. He’s also showing two videos, one of which is Formation (2022), featuring footage of German parakeets in flight that’s projected at a massive scale on a curved screen.

These works appear alongside pieces by other artists. Among them are 15 drawings by Robert Smithson that look nothing like the Land art for which he’s known. Instead, they are closer to Surrealist paintings, with cyborgian arms that fly out in a circle and a bacchanal of figures circling around a person in a cage.

Lamarche-Vadel said the inclusion of these works by Smithson, Giorgio de Chirico, and Kathe Kollwitz was part of Gaillard’s larger project of exhuming unknown history: he specifically went for works that weren’t known by artists who are canonized. In doing so, he’s hoping to reshape how viewers understand these artists’ work, much as he’s also trying to reshape how viewers understand Le Défenseur.

Gaillard is also presenting, as found objects, two gargoyles dating from the late 19th century that once adorned the Notre-Dame de Reims cathedral. Shelling during World War II caused the building’s lead frame to liquefy, and it poured out the gargoyles’ mouths (intended as the cathedral’s rain drainage system) and then harden mid-air.

“When you see a public artwork like Le Défenseur du Temps, you can really build your own emotional relationship with it that you can’t have in a museum,” Lamarche-Vadel said. “He’s trying to reflect on that with these artists.”

That dynamic runs both ways, since Gaillard’s show will also involve the Pompidou recognizing Le Défenseur as an artwork for the first time ever. According to Lamarche-Vadel, although the sculpture has always been sited near the Pompidou, there’s never been any mention of it in the museum’s materials. That will change once Gaillard’s show closes in January, after which the work will be reinstalled and officially entrusted to the Pompidou for any further maintenance.

Lamarche-Vadel characterized this a “healing relationship” in which the Monestier sculpture is rendered anew.

The gesture also means that, though Gaillard’s exhibitions will eventually close, the artist has left a permanent, if largely invisible, mark on the Parisian urban landscape. “This is really proposing the idea that restoration can be an act of creation,” Lamarche-Vadel said.

Unlike the museum’s most recent president, Emma Lavigne, who came to the Palais de Tokyo in 2019 after having directed the Centre Pompidou-Metz, Désanges comes from a more experimental background. He is the founder of Work Method, a curatorial agency that bills itself as a “production structure,” and has, since 2013, run the art program of La Verrière, a Brussels gallery run by luxury fashion brand Hermès. He was also formerly the guest curator at Le Plateau-Frac Ile-de-France Art Center.

The Palais de Tokyo is Paris’s biggest contemporary art museum; never before has Désanges run an institution of its scale. In the announcement of his appointment, he promised to consider the museum as a “living body” that would exist in a statement of “permanent evolution,” and said he would partner with local institutions and schools. Désanges also said that, under his direction, once every two years, the museum would host a major participatory event outside the institution’s walls.

It is not the first time Désanges has worked with the Palais de Tokyo. In 2018, he organized a solo show of Neïl Beloufa that is one of the artist’s biggest exhibitions to date.

His appointment comes as many of Paris’s museums see a turnover in their leadership. In the past couple years, the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, the Musée du Quai Branly–Jacques Chirac, and the Centre Pompidou have all named new directors.

At the Pinault Collection, Lavigne will be charge of three museums: the newly unveiled Bourse de Commerce in Paris, as well as the Punta della Dogana and the Palazzo Grassi, both in Venice. These institutions have been used to showcase monumental presentations by Jeff Koons, Urs Fischer, Damien Hirst, David Hammons, and more.

Lavigne’s departure is yet another shakeup at the top of a storied Paris institution. In the past year and a half, the Louvre, the Musée du Quai Branly–Jacques Chirac, and the Centre Pompidou have all gotten new leadership. The top posts at the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de l’Orangerie—which were formerly held by Laurence des Cars, the new president of the Louvre—are currently vacant.

When Lavigne was hired in 2019, her appointment was much talked about because it made her the first woman to lead the Palais de Tokyo since the museum rebranded itself as a kunsthalle in 2002. It was also a rarity at the time, since few major contemporary art institutions anywhere in France are woman-led.

In a statement, Pinault said that Lavigne “will allow an increasing audience to meet the art of our time, in its diversity and perpetual renewal.”

Lavigne takes the reins from Jean-Jacques Aillagon, who has been close to Pinault for years. Aillagon will remain as an adviser to the collection.

Iran

U.S. President Donald Trump has recanted his previous comments about striking Iranian cultural sites, which some said was illegal. [The Art Newspaper]

Earlier this week, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s president and director were among the top art officials who condemned Trump’s previous comments. [ARTnews]

Controversies

Artists have criticized the Palais de Tokyo in Paris for planning to mount a show organized by the Mathaf museum in Qatar. Some have alleged that, in connecting itself with a country that criminalizes homosexuality, the Palais de Tokyo is not as LGBTQ-friendly as it claims to be. [The Art Newspaper]

Art historian Claire Bishop and curator Nikki Columbus, who previously alleged that MoMA PS1 discriminated against her because she was pregnant, co-wrote a “speculative review” of the new Museum of Modern Art. [n+1]

Artists

“It is hard to think of another artist who was more beloved than John Baldessari, who died on Thursday at 88,” Deborah Solomon writes. [The New York Times]

Vivian Suter, the Guatemala-based artist who is known for her unstretched abstract canvases, gets the profile treatment. [The Guardian]

New Initiatives

The Joyce Foundation has named the winners of its $50,000 awards, which are given to socially engaged art being shown in Chicago, Cleveland, and the Twin Cities. Among this year’s winners are the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland and the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. [Press Release]

The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Culture has launched a new residency program through which seven artists, writers, and curators can spend six weeks in Jeddah. [The National]

Art History

After an earthquake shook large portions of Puerto Rico, an historic church dating back to the 19th century in Guayanilla collapsed. [The Art Newspaper]

Could Elizabeth “Lizzie” Siddal, who sat for a number of Pre-Raphaelite painters, have been the most tragic model in art history? [BBC News]

Emma Lavigne.

MANUEL BRAUN

In a first for the institution, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, one of France’s premier contemporary art museums, now has a female leader.

The Art Newspaper’s French edition reports that the museum has selected Emma Lavigne, the current director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz, as its new president. Lavigne is the fourth person to hold the position since the museum relaunched itself as a kunsthalle-style institution in 2002, after Jean de Loisy (who led the museum from 2012 until January of this year), Marc Olivier-Wahler, and the duo of Nicolas Bourriaud and Jérôme Sans, its founding directors.

Lavigne’s pick is unusual in the French cultural sphere, as most other elite contemporary art institutions, like the Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Art Contemporain Lyon, and Montpellier Contemporary, have historically been directed by men.

De Loisy announced in December that he would depart the Palais de Tokyo to lead the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, the esteemed national art academy in Paris. His appointment has been met with controversy—60 arts professionals signed an open letter in which they argued that de Loisy is too “conservative” to oversee the academy, saying that his age and his politics should have excluded him from consideration for the role. (De Loisy has rebutted those claims.) He and the Palais de Tokyo’s curatorial team are in the process of readying the 2019 edition of the Biennale de Lyon, which is due to open in September.

Lavigne was the curator of the prior Biennale de Lyon, in 2017. She has been the director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz since 2015, and, prior to that, was a curator at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Her curatorial credits at the Centre Pompidou include a Pierre Huyghe retrospective in 2013, and she was on the team behind “elles@centrepompidou,” a landmark 350-work collection rehang of its permanent collection entirely featuring female artists.

A poster for the 2019 Biennale de Lyon designed by Stephen Powers.

COURTESY BIENNALE DE LYON

The Biennale de Lyon has revealed the artist list for its 2019 edition, which is set to open in the French city on September 18 and run through January 5.

The biennial’s 15th edition will be organized by Jean de Loisy, the director of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, along with that museum’s curatorial team, and this year will take place at a new location—the Usines Fagor, a former factory once run by the appliance manufacturing company Fagor. (As in the past, works in the biennial will also be shown at the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon and in the city’s Presqu’île district.)

This year’s biennial is called “Là où les eaux se mêlent,” which can be translated as “Where the Waters Mix,” in reference to a similarly titled Raymond Carver poem. Its focus, according to press materials, will be the collisions between biological ecosystems and humankind.

The artist list follows below.

Rebecca Ackroyd
Isabelle Andriessen
Jean-Marie Appriou
Felipe Arturo
Bianca Bondi
Malin Bülow
Bureau Des Pleurs
Stéphane Calais
Nina Chanel Abney
Gaëlle Choisne
Yu-cheng Chou
Morgan Courtois
Daniel Dewar & Gregory Gicquel
Khalil El Ghrib
Escif
Jenny Feal
Thomas Feuerstein
Julieta García Vazquez & Javier Villa De Villafañe
Petrit Halilaj
Dale Harding
Holly Hendry
Karim Kal
Bronwyn Katz
Sam Keogh
Lee Kit
Eva L’hoest
Mire Lee
Yona Lee
Renée Levi
Minouk Lim
Lyl Radio
Taus Makhacheva
Léonard Martin
Gustav Metzger
Nicolas Momein
Shana Moulton
Simphiwe Ndzube
Josèfa Ntjam
Fernando Palma Rodriguez
Le Peuple Qui Manque
Thao-nguyen Phan
Abraham Poincheval
Stephen Powers
Philippe Quesne
Marie Reinert
Megan Rooney
Pamela Rosenkranz
Ashley Hans Scheirl & Jakob Lena Knebl
Aguirre Schwarz
Stéphane Thidet
Nico Vascellari
Trevor Yeung
Pannaphan Yodmanee
Victor Yudaev
Mengzhi Zheng