L'Origine: The Secret Life of the World's Most Erotic Masterpiece

by Lilianne Milgrom

Overview

Winner of 5 major book awards, including the Publishers Weekly U.S. 2021 Selfies Award for Best Adult Fiction and winner of the IndieReader 2021 Discovery Award.

“L’Origine got me hooked—what a story! Milgrom brings the reader right along on her adventures as a copyist of one of the most well-known paintings in all the world.” —Harriet Welty Rochefort, author of French Fried, French Toast, Joie de Vivre, and Final Transgression

The riveting odyssey of one of the world’s most scandalous works of art.

In 1866, maverick French artist Gustave Courbet painted one of the most iconic images in the history of art: a sexually explicit portrait of a woman’s exposed genitals. Audaciously titled L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World), the scandalous painting was kept hidden for a century and a half. Today, it hangs in the world-renowned Orsay Museum in Paris, viewed by millions of visitors a year.

As the first artist authorized by the Orsay Museum to re-create Courbet’s The Origin of the World, author Lilianne Milgrom was thrust into the painting’s intimate orbit, spending six weeks replicating every fold, crevice, and pubic hair. The experience inspired her to share her story and the painting’s riveting clandestine history with readers beyond the confines of the art world.

L’Origine is an entertaining and superbly researched work of historical fiction that traces the true story of the painting’s unlikely tale of survival, replete with French revolutionaries, Turkish pashas, and nefarious Nazi captains. But L’Origine is more than a riveting romp through history—it also sheds light on society’s complex relationship with the female body.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781954854147
Publisher:	Girl Friday Books
Publication date:	10/12/2021
Pages:	292
Sales rank:	683,877
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 5.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Internationally acclaimed artist Lilianne Milgrom was born in Paris, grew up in Australia, and currently resides in the United States. Milgrom holds two degrees from Melbourne Universityand an associate art degree from the Academy of Art in San Francisco. She exhibits her artwork around the world and is the recipient of multiple awards. In 2011, she became the first authorized copyist of Gustave Courbet’s controversial painting L’Origine du Monde (The Origin of the World), which hangs in the Orsay Museum in Paris and draws over a million visitors a year. After rendering a near-identical copy of Courbet’s masterpiece, she spent close to a decade researching and writing L’Origine. She lives in the greater Washington, DC, area with her husband while her grown children explore the world. L’Origine is her first book.

Editorial Reviews

"L'Origine got me hooked—what a story! Milgrom brings the reader right along on her adventures as a copyist of one of the most well-known paintings in all the world." —Harriet Welty Rochefort, author of French Fried, French Toast, Joie de Vivre, and Final Transgression

"L'Origine is an apt title for Lilianne Milgrom's debut novel, since it is the painting itself—L'Origine du monde—that is the heroine of this vividly written, well-researched, and highly compelling book. Part historical fiction, part personal journey, L'Origine is an original story well worth reading." —Barbara Linn Probst, awarding-winning author of Queen of the Owls: A Novel

"What a gorgeous, captivating novel: a tour de force! Who knew that a painting's provenance could make for such a profoundly moving and thought-provoking page-turner? I couldn't read fast enough and at the same time didn't want to reach the end. Milgrom has written a masterpiece." —Joan Dempsey, author of the award-winning novel This Is How It Begins

"I LOVED this book! I love learning about art history and all things related to France, in addition to Milgrom's intimate and fascinating relationship with this work of art. I couldn't put this book down and will never look at art the same way again—especially L'Origine du monde." —Krystal Kenney, Paris-based photographer and founder of La Vie Creative podcast.

"L'Origine is a vivid and well-told novel about one of the more notorious paintings in the history of art. Immaculately researched and full of verve, the book is a real achievement. The story is prefaced with a tale of the author's own: how she spent several weeks in the Musée d'Orsay making a painted copy of Courbet's original L'Origine du monde. When the narrative transports the reader back to nineteenth-century Paris and into Courbet's studio, we are already primed in the intimate and complex processes of the act of looking. One of the pleasures of the novel is that it celebrates the creative and erotic possibilities generated between an artist, their model, and the centuries-old act of looking. Five stars." —Christopher P. Jones, historian and art critic

"There's nothing like a good story to grip a reader, and Milgrom's own tale of witnessing and emulating Gustave Courbet's L'Origine du monde is the perfect way to get into—and attempt to understand—this infamous masterpiece. Highly recommended for art history aficionados, Francophiles, and history and biography fans. It exposes readers who stand outside the normal confines of the art world to the fascinating world beyond the frame." —Jennifer Dasal, podcast host of ArtCurious and author of ArtCurious: Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History

"Milgrom's novel is amazingly researched and a seamless mix of fiction and true history. She has written an extremely engaging book, like a thriller. I thoroughly enjoyed the parallel between the painting's odyssey and the condition of women throughout history." —Sylvia A. Rodríguez, psychoanalyst in the Lacanian field and cofounder of the Australian Center for Psychoanalysis

"Throughout history, female sexuality has been regarded as ugly, repulsive, and shameful while simultaneously revered to the point of idolization. Lilianne Milgrom's intimate experience with Gustave Courbet's scandalous painting gives testament to the classic divide of women's cultural representation." —Dr. Bella Ellwood-Clayton, sexual anthropologist, author, and TED Talk presenter

"Milgrom's book weaves her own experiences as a 'copiste' of the infamous painting, L'Origine du monde, with a deeply researched and engaging narrative retelling of its almost unbelievable journey from inception through to the present day. Part truth, part fiction, entirely enjoyable!" —Lindsay Sheedy, art historian, Rome Prize recipient, founder of Stuff About Things podcast

"The author’s beautiful, generous prose about Paris and other settings is much like a verbal impressionist painting. Famous names abound and it is fascinating to imagine conversations between, for example, Monet and a reluctant art dealer of his day who still isn’t sure about investing in this ‘new impressionism.’ There is, of course, a corollary between this particular piece of art being passed between wealthy men and the similar fate suffered by countless women. But Milgrom reveals these men as complex characters, not so easily judged. Even so, the male gaze is on full display in its spectrum of desires, wanting to own the female form in the abstract as well as the corporeal.

For fans of historical fiction focused on the world’s great artworks, L’Origine delivers a story spiced with famous names, mystery, and sex. Author and visual artist Lilianne Milgrom carries readers along on this painting’s colorful journey, with a deliciously gleeful mix of fact and fiction that is very satisfying." —Kath Peters for IndieReader

“Milgrom masterfully layers art history, social history, biography, memoir, and fiction into this novel with the care and attention to detail of a master portrait artist . . . She manages to reveal a self-portrait within the portrait that rivals, in words, the brushstrokes of Courbet himself and echoes the meta-commentary of Caravaggio and Rembrandt. L’Origine marries historical analysis with artistic observation. Not since the works of Eugen Weber have I read such an engaging book of history.”—Judge, 29th Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards, Honorable Mention

From the Publisher

08/16/2021

Artist Milgrom debuts with a richly imagined blend of autofiction and art history that revolves around a copyist named Lilianne Milgrom’s engagement with a shocking Courbet painting. During a brief residency at the Musée d’Orsay in 2011, Lilianne gains permission to copy 19th-century French painter Gustave Courbet’s scandalous L’Origine du monde, a diminutive nude portrait featuring the female subject’s genitals. Lilianne proceeds to unravel the picture’s story from its commission by Khalil Bey, a wealthy Turk in Paris, when Courbet was at the height of his fame in 1865, to the painting’s belated public display at the end of the 20th century. Milgrom evokes the powerful reactions that attracted its owners and the lengths they undertook to conceal the work as well as Courbet’s tragic death after being convicted on false charges of desecrating national artifacts because of his association with the Paris Commune. In 1913, Hungarian Jewish art collector Ferenc Hatvany acquires the painting, and subsequently recovers it from Nazi confiscation. The final private owner, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, uses it as a therapeutic talking point with his patients. The outrages, desire, and desperation the painting provokes make for delicious, emotionally powerful reading, while the historical details appear unobtrusively. Readers will be delighted by this delectable tale. (Self-published)

Publishers Weekly