“Easy Virtue” exhibition on view at Van Gogh Museum

PanARMENIAN.Net - From 19 February until 19 June 2016, the Van Gogh Museum will present 'Easy Virtue': a sensational exhibition organized in collaboration with Musée d’Orsay about the visual presentation of prostitution in French art from the years between 1850 and 1910, Art Daily reports.

It is a theme that has never before been presented in an exhibition on such a large scale. Visitors can admire more than 100 paintings and works on paper by important artists such as Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh and Picasso. The exhibition will also include some unusual objects, such as an extravagant 19th-century bed. In Paris, this much-talked-about exhibition is presently considered as the absolute must-see of the season.

During the second half of the 19th century, prostitution was a favourite subject of the visual arts. Artists enthusiastically depicted prostitution as an aspect of modern life in the city of Paris and they painted women soliciting on the boulevards, wealthy courtesans in their salons and the prematurely aged prostitutes in brothels. The theme was relevant because of the many social discussions about the dangers of prostitution and the pros and cons of regulating it. Easy Virtue, in the Van Gogh Museum from 19 February to 19 June, shows why this stimulating, yet at the same time complex and controversial subject appealed to artists.