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Book Details:
Book Title: L'Origine: The secret life of the world's most erotic masterpieceby Lilianne Milgrom
Category: Adult Fiction
(18+), 255 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Girl Friday Books - a new imprint from Girl Friday Productions
Release Date:2020 first edition. October 2021 re-released by Girl Friday Books
Content Rating: R. My
book does not have bad language and only one descriptive sex scene, but the
protagonist is a painting whose explicit depiction of a woman's lower torso
and genitals has made it a controversial work of art for over a century and a
half.
Book Description:
The riveting odyssey of one of the world's most scandalous works of art.
In 1866, maverick French artist Gustave Courbet painted one of the most
iconic images in the history of art: a sexually explicit portrait of a
woman's exposed genitals. Audaciously titled
L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World), the scandalous painting
was kept hidden for a century and a half. Today, it hangs in the
world-renowned Orsay Museum in Paris, viewed by millions of visitors a
year.
As the first artist authorized by the Orsay Museum to re-create Courbet's
The Origin of the World, author Lilianne Milgrom was thrust into the
painting's intimate orbit, spending six weeks replicating every fold,
crevice, and pubic hair. The experience inspired her to share her story and
the painting's titillating, clandestine history. L'Origine is a tale of
survival, replete with French revolutionaries, Turkish pashas and nefarious
Nazi captains. Hold onto your berets for a riveting ride through
history.
Are you partial to weighty sagas or do you prefer a quick-paced read?
I’m not a huge fan of books that are so thick they can be used as doorstops but
I blame my own attention span, not the authors. So when I embarked on my
award-winning novel, L’Origine, about a scandalous 19th
century painting whose extraordinary adventures span a hundred and fifty years,
it was a challenge to frame the narrative without losing the reader along the
way.
After several false starts, I realized that the best way to tell the
painting’s story was through the eyes of its eccentric collectors, skipping
periods of time that were not relevant to the plot.
In the first chapter we meet Gustave Courbet, the artist responsible for
painting L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World),
the infamous painting at the heart of my novel. Courbet, a cocky, rebellious,
and charismatic painter (think Johnny Depp) arrives in Paris in the late 1850’s
and, against all odds, takes Paris by storm. He paints The Origin of the
World as a private commission for a worldly Ottoman diplomat with a decided
fondness for paintings of unclad women. After losing his fortune in a
spectacular way, the Ottoman must find a way to dispose of his naughty little
painting.
Fast forward several decades and we find the painting languishing in a
dusty antique store in Paris. It is acquired by an eccentric physicist whose
barrel-chested widow palms it off to a famous gallerist, who in turn sells it
to a Hungarian baron. You get the picture. As the painting continues on its
harrowing journey, it survives two world wars before passing on to its final
collector, the famous psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan. In the mid 1990’s the
painting finally finds a permanent home at the Orsay Museum in Paris. With all
these fabulous characters, a hundred and fifty years passes in a blink of an
eye!
Meet the Author:
Paris-born Lilianne Milgrom is an internationally acclaimed artist and
award-winning author residing in Washington DC. In 2011, she became the first
authorized copyist of Gustave Courbet’s controversial painting L’Origine du
Monde, which hangs in the Orsay Museum in Paris. Milgrom spent a decade
researching and writing
L’Origine: The Secret Life of the World’s Most Erotic Masterpiece. Her
debut novel has been awarded six literary honors including the Publisher’s
Weekly 2021 US Selfies Book Award for Best Adult Fiction.
Delighted to see my award-winning historical fiction 'L'Origine' on tour with Jazzy Book Reviews. It has something for every reader: scandal, history, mystery, fascinating characters and an international backdrop!
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Delighted to see my award-winning historical fiction 'L'Origine' on tour with Jazzy Book Reviews. It has something for every reader: scandal, history, mystery, fascinating characters and an international backdrop!
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