Before reading L’Origine by Lilianne Milgrom, I couldn’t help but do a Google search for the famous painting featured on the book’s cover. After sifting through a bevy of images that came up, I realized I had seen the painting before, floating around in other art spaces on the Internet. At the time, I had assumed it was a modern painting done in oil to emulate an older style. Once I realized that the painting had a longer history than I had first considered, I was all the more excited to dive into L’Origine to see its origin writ large. The novel itself is surprisingly funny, and charming in its mix of historical fact and fiction. It satisfied my nosy nature, offering pleasing tidbits of information on the grand and granule scale, all attached to L’Origine.

The novel opens with a prologue to frame the painting: an artist travels to Paris to focus on her art. There she encounters Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde in the flesh and on the canvas. She is immediately struck by a longing to learn of the painting’s past. To understand the allure of the painting—which she believes is something beyond the simple titillation of a carefully painted and presented mons pubis and vulva, resplendent with pubic hair—she must reproduce it herself. She applies to become a copiste at the Musée d'Orsay to paint L’Origine. When her painting is finished, the history of the original L’Origine is revealed, twisting through wars and the rising and falling fortunes of those who machinate those same wars. The fate of the painting is followed through the centuries, as it is almost lost, and then found, and then made notorious. How marvelous to be able to get a fictional snapshot into the life of a painting, from conception to legacy.

“With every copied brushstroke, I had absorbed the rhythm of the great artist’s brush, felt the motion of his hand, glimpsed the inner workings of his mind, and sensed the beating of his heart,” muses the artist in the prologue. The art of writing about making art is where this novel shines. Describing genius in action is challenging, since it can either alienate a reader, or let the genius lose its luster. But Milgrom is so enamored with the act of creating art that she capably brings the reader into the process, much like the artist in the prologue is able to access Courbet’s inner workings by copying his painting. Both the artist in the prologue, and Gustave Courbet himself are most intriguing when they are painting. The joy is so evident, it is hard not to share in it.

Although L’Origine is a painting of the most private parts of a woman, I found that the women in the novel were not always as fleshed out as they could have been. The lovers of Gustave, Khalil, and the other men in the novel sometimes seemed to be only as important as they were attractive. It is a tricky balance to strike between telling the tale of a painting of a vagina, and not reducing women to merely their genitals. The artist in the prologue and the epilogue was the fullest of the women in the story, adequately framing the novel—I began and ended in the hands of a strong woman. 

For readers who like their history a little saucy, and their fiction a little salacious, L’Origine: The Secret Life of the World’s Most Erotic Masterpiece is the right book to turn to.