By Jake Bellone & Nico Rahim

Man did not come from primordial dust and the breath of God—man came from a womb.  Throughout the ages man has ravaged Earth with hard head and hard dick, saying that it is woman who is lacking.  These two-headed beasts—having only enough blood to allow one to function properly at any given moment—have displayed an insatiable blood thirst, while it is woman who bleeds with every lunar cycle.
           
Gustav Courbet’s “l’origine du monde” presents us, at once, with the terrifying intrusion of the Real into everyday life.  What is signified by this unabashed nakedness is the violence of the Real.  Included in this picture is not simply the naked body as such, but the basis of nakedness—that is, the most vulgar parts of the human body, precisely those parts which force us to recall our own physical body, or own biology—not what separates us from the animals, but what reminds us of our animality.  Courbet’s painting offers the sexual object, the object of desire, the point of gaze, precisely the object of concealment.  What Courbet’s painting reveals is the object of concealment, moreover, in fashion.  Fashion is there to tease us with the Real without ever showing it, a constant tantalizing. 
           
This violent aspect of the Real is what is constantly behind all concealing.  What we should recall importantly is that to face the Real as Real is always a violent gesture, and many times winds up in impotence.  Recall that the phenomenon of “cutting” is a desperate gesture to assure oneself of one’s existence as Real, and that several desperate attempts to reach the thing-as-such have ended up in the death of a lot of people.  Even Courbet’s title is there to remind us that each of us comes from a place of blood and fluid, the “inner workings”, the internal aspects of the human body, that which ultimately structures appearance.

The title, “l’origine du monde,” itself displays human ignorance and anthrocentricism.  The world did not come from a womb, it was the womb that came from the world.  Symbolically, Earth—Gaia—is the mother, the womb, the primordial dust impregnated with the breath of the divine, and brought forth life as we know it.  The closest life on Earth can come to the Real is Earth itself.  The closest humanity can come to the Real within humanity is the womb.