Van Gogh Museum shows Paris prostitution through paintings

AMSTERDAM — The ballet rehearsal painted in 1874 by French artist Edgar Degas looks, at first glance, like an innocent portrayal of dancers limbering up for a performance.

Ambiguity is one of the key themes of the exhibition opening Friday that explores artists’ fascination with prostitution in Paris in the second half of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries.

The bed dominates a corner of one of the galleries where more than 100 works by some 40 artists hang on walls painted the lurid reds and pinks of a boudoir in a Paris brothel.

Divided into four themes, it first explores the age of ambiguity as Paris grew into a center of conspicuous consumption in the 19th century where everything, including women, could be bought and sold, and nobody could be quite sure whether the woman on a street corner was a prostitute or not.

The exhibition then looks at Parisian prostitution’s superstars — the courtesans — through ostentatious portraits and some of their belongings, including a walking cane that hid a dainty — if a whip can be dainty — “cat-o-six-tails” that would not look out of place in “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

Courtesans — effectively high-priced 19th century call girls — “were independent women who had become extremely successful and highly regarded in society, and they became fashion icons and sort of celebrities,” Rueger said.

There’s a range of photographs from early pornography — which often used prostitutes as models — to police records and the scarred faces and bodies of syphilis victims.

[...] the exhibition moves on to the early 20th century and depictions of Paris prostitution by international artists drawn to the city, including Pablo Picasso and Edvard Munch.