Deborah de Robertis: Video shows reaction as perfomance artist woman strips naked inside Paris art museum

Ms de Robertis was imitating Manet’s iconic painting Olympia in an exhibition on prositution

An artist who stripped naked inside a museum has released video showing people's reactions as she lay down in front of a painting.

Deborah de Robertis entered Paris’ world famous Musée d’Orsay in January before removing her clothes and imitating Édouard Manet’s iconic painting, Olympia.

Lying down beneath the impressionist’s nude, de Robertis resembled the painting’s subject in all but her headgear, having attached a GoPro camera to film the incident.

In the video, released exclusively to The Independent, museum staff can be seen desperately trying to cover her up with several different objects - including her own coat and a large rug - while urging bystanders to put their cameras away.

The 31-year-old from Luxembourg spent two days in police custody after eventually being ejected from the museum.

In an interview with The Independent On Sunday shortly after the performance, de Robertis described how she intended to “make the models in the paintings active and no longer passive.”

de Robertis removes her coat inside the world famous Musée d’Orsay (Deborah De Robertis)

“I am reversing the relationship between the artist and the model, or between the public and the model, or between the power structure of the art world and the model,” she said.

“In my work, the model becomes not just the subject but active – an artist in her own right.”

She also hoped to highlight what she was hypocrisy in the museum’s policy on nudity.

“The only hypocrisy that I pointed out,” she explained, “was that the museum attracts people by organising exhibitions with sexual themes and lots of female nudity but then comes over all prudish if a female artist like me wants to perform in the nude.”

The artist had given the Musée d’Orsay 20 minutes warning before arriving at the exhibition on prostitution in 19th Century French art, titled 'Splendour and Misery: Images of Prostitution 1850-1910'.

The performance itself also lasted 20 minutes, accompanied by 15 friends and other artists to assist the project.

Watch the full-length, unedited version of the video here (Warning: video features full nudity and loud music)

OLYMPIA from Deborah De Robertis on Vimeo.

As seen in the video, a fair crowd gathers to observe the commotion.

“The public were completely on my side,” she said. “Anyone who objected could just have left the room, but no one did. The museum security guards ordered me to get dressed and, when I refused, they called the police.”

As well as being detained for two days before being released without charge, the museum lodged a formal complaint against Ms de Robertis citing “indecent exposure”.

Édouard Manet's Olympia (1863)

The latter has provoked a strong reaction from Ms de Robertis, as she writes alongside the full-length video:

“Although there were no legal consequences, the meaning of your complaint is extremely serious and the distorted mechanisms it has revealed must be addressed," she writes

"By accusing me of indecent exposure you have influenced public debate and forced me into the uncomfortable position of defending what needs no defense (sic).”

The Luxembourg artist organised a similar performance at the Musée d’Orsay in 2014, imitating Courbet’s rather more graphic The Origin of the World, as well as other art galleries in Luxembourg and Brussels.