An art scandal

There’s an iconic painting that hangs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and is much admired by the museum’s visitors.

But once upon a time the reception wasn’t quite as warm.

I’m speaking of John Singer Sargent’s portrait of French socialite Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, Madame X, which was first unveiled at the 1884 Paris Salon.

The reaction to that painting nearly destroyed Sargent’s career.

The painting you see above, is not quite the original painting. It’s a revised one.

The original had one strap slipping off Gautreau’s shoulder. And that was the scandal. Yes, that’s all it took. The mere suggestion of something else.

The backlash was severe.

American painter Ralph Wormeley Curtis, whose work was also being exhibited, wrote that "There was a grande tapage [mob] before it all day." Of the public’s reaction he shared that "All the women jeer. Ah voilà 'la belle!' 'Oh quelle horreur!' [Ah, here is 'the beauty'!' 'Oh how horrible!'] etc." Newspapers and critics ridiculed Gautreau and her social standing took a hit.

That’s how rigid social norms were in late 19th-century Parisian high society. Women like Gautreau was were expected to be elegant, virtuous—and demure. So much as a hint of sexual agency was a step too far.

The fallen strap—a seemingly minor detail—was interpreted as suggestive, even indecent.

Sargent, giving in to public pressures, repainted the strap back on her shoulder. It didn’t seem to appease the mob, and he left Paris.

It’s startling to see how something so insignificant today could cause such an uproar not terribly long ago. It reminds us how punishment for the transgression of social norms is nothing new.

Moral reactionarism has always been with us. But the standards that are being enforced are ever-evolving. In the 1880s, exposing a shoulder was too much. These days, it might be making a poorly timed joke.

Social norms are constantly constructed and reconstructed to reflect power dynamics, moral anxieties and even aesthetic tastes at any given moment in time. They shift, at times, slowly. And sometimes, overnight. What’s reasonable today, might have seemed once bizarre. Likewise, the things that were once considered “normal” are today considered unjust or barbaric.

I wonder, in a century or two from now, how will we look at some of the shaming and judgement that is going on today. Will we judge it as fair? Silly? Absurd?

What will the next scarlet letter be?