After an 8-Year Legal Battle, Facebook Ends Its Dispute With a French School Teacher Who Posted Courbet’s ‘Origin of the World’

An eight-year legal
dispute between Facebook and a French school teacher who had his
account shut down for sharing an image of Gustave Courbet’s 1866
painting L’Origine du Monde (The
Origin of the World)—a realistic, closely cropped
depiction of a woman’s genitals—has finally come to an end.

Durand had sued in a Paris civil court for the reactivation of
his Facebook account and €20,000 ($22,550) in damages. In
March 2018, the court ruled that Facebook had been in the
wrong to shut down Durand’s account. But the decision added
that because the teacher had signed up for Facebook under a
pseudonym, he violated the social media giant’s terms of services
and was not entitled to damages.

Durand had planned to appeal, but the parties instead agreed to
a joint resolution in which they’ll each make a donation to the
French street art association Le MUR (The Wall). “This
donation ends the legal battle between Mr. Durand and Facebook,”
Stephane Cottineau, Durand’s lawyer, told Agence France
Presse.

A spate of recent legal action has forced Facebook to reconsider
its strict no-nudity policy, which has been applied to artworks
such as the Stone Age statue the Venus of Willendorf, a
Danish national monument of a
mermaid, and even an Evelyne Axell painting
of a woman licking an ice
cream cone. Nudity is now allowed in painting and sculpture
shared on Facebook, but photographers are still
petitioning the company to allow artistic nudity to appear
uncensored in their work.

Courbet’s painting, which belongs to
Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, also
made headlines in September when French historian Claude
Schopp claimed that the long unidentified model for the painting
was a ballet dancer named Constance Queniaux.

The post After an 8-Year Legal Battle, Facebook Ends Its
Dispute With a French School Teacher Who Posted Courbet’s ‘Origin
of the World’ appeared first on artnet News.