Her best-known picture, The Horse Fair (1852–1855), hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Born in 1822 into a poor family in Bordeaux, Bonheur by her mid-twenties had become a celebrated animalière, or painter (and sculptor) of animals: she painted oxen in the field, lions, horses, sheep (wild and domestic), and countless cows. 1 For many people now, it may be only a name, since the decline of Bonheur’s fame after her death in 1899 was as precipitous as her rise through the Paris art world had been. Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here.A coastal hotel in Bordeaux, a Marrakesh bathhouse, the first pet cemetery in the US, a floating bar in Paris renowned for its weekly Soirées Gay: as the most famous female artist of the nineteenth century, Rosa Bonheur left her name across France and beyond.
It is also the country’s most visited landmark. “The Acropolis and its monuments are universal symbols of the classical spirit and civilization and form the greatest architectural and artistic complex bequeathed by Greek Antiquity to the world,” says the UNESCO listing for the site. It has not offered any reaction to the controversy. The University of Thessaloniki, which did not inform the culture ministry of the film’s contents, risks being caught up in the investigation. Heading off questions regarding the level of surveillance of such sites, it said they suffered staffing problems because the finance ministry “almost never approves the recruitment of guards”. The union representing those guarding the country’s museums and archaeological sites expressed its “outrage and shame” over what it called a “vile film”. “You can’t do anything and everything in the name of activism.”
“As a Greek, I’m ashamed,” the president of the Greek Actors’ Association, Spyros Bibilas, told broadcaster ANT1. It was its appearance online last Friday that sparked the backlash. They described the erotic scene between the two men at the site as a “political act”.īut a statement Friday from the culture ministry said: “The archaeological site of the Acropolis does not lend itself to activism or any other action that offends or shows a lack of respect to the monument.” The 36-minute film was first shown to a small audience on December 16 at the University of Thessaloniki in the north of the country without provoking an outcry. The anonymous producers of the short film called “Departhenon” said the Parthenon symbolised “nationalism, the cult of Antiquity” and “patriarchy”. They wanted to “find as soon as possible those responsible for this illegal shoot”, said the spokesman. A culture ministry spokesman told AFP that they had launched an investigation into the video, which shows a sexual encounter between two masked men at the UNESCO-listed site. Greek officials vowed Tuesday to track the people behind the filming of a gay sex scene on Athens’ Acropolis, the country’s most important archaeological site, after footage emerged online.