The “cleaning” is being done, in complete secrecy.
Goodbye giant fresco where naked bodies and grotesque sexes exulted!
The walls of the interns' duty room at Lariboisière hospital in Paris are becoming wiser again.
There remains a feeling of emptiness, barely filled by the long tables arranged in a U shape where the young doctors take their meals.
Opened in the 19th century, when the public hospital was being organized, the on-call rooms were supposed to offer interns a haven of peace as well as a place of escape.
Directed by a steward elected by the students, closed to outside eyes, they are subject to internal regulations (for example, it is forbidden to discuss medicine at the table, under penalty of having a pledge) and to a series of rites.
We dine there, we sing there, we rest between two guards and we sometimes dance there, during “tonus” (parties).
On the walls, frescoes financed by the interns – and very often erotic – complete the schoolboy and libertarian side of the place.
Generations of doctors have passed there, and have created lasting memories.
“The general public perceives these rooms as small brothels, which is false.
For young people working 70 hours a week, they represent a place of mutual aid and exchange
,” testifies a former intern who is now in his fifties.
The photographer Gilles Tondoni, who haunted public hospitals for decades and produced a book of photos (
L'Image obscene,
from Mark Batty Publisher), says nothing else.
“These are places of dissent, a state within a state.
But the spirit is benevolent,”
he assures.
The two of us created those of the Trousseau hospital in Paris, and we would never have portrayed female interns being raped, even though these places are not open to the public.
Marie Clémentine Marès, painter
At the start of 2024, dozens of rooms spread across France would still have painted decorations, not all of which are licentious.
“Between us, we made those of the Trousseau hospital in Paris, and we would never have portrayed female interns being raped, even though these places are not open to the public,”
specifies Marie Clémentine Marès, who preferred to make giant naked bodies in the manner of Fauvism.
Tondini's photos, most of which are unpublishable, show that the same prevention did not apply everywhere: we can no longer count the walls covered with scenes of fellatio, piles of naked bodies and lesbian couples bearing the effigy of internal.
Courbet's Origin of the World
and Egon Schiele's Creatures clearly inspired the artists.
Legal actions
Which doesn't please everyone.
“These frescoes have nothing to do with cultural works, they create an ambient sexism, which is from an old world.
In a private company, let alone abroad, this would never be tolerated.
Why, then, does the public service let this happen?”,
exclaims Céline Piques, one of the spokespersons for the association Dare feminism!
Seeing a possible new Metoo in hospital environments, the collective first approached the administrative court of Toulouse around the CHU fresco in 2021, and won a first round in the name of
“respect for human dignity”
.
The walls have since been covered in white paint.
A second referral to the Rennes administrative court was immediately launched.
Dare to feminism!
then appealed to the Council of State to have the frescoes banned throughout France (and his request was rejected).
At the Ministry of Health, the association's legal actions initially caused embarrassment - if only by the publicity given by these cases in the local press, where giant penises brutally occupied the front pages of the newspapers
.
“Since the scandal in the guard room of the Clermont Ferrant University Hospital, which showed the Minister of Health Marisol Touraine being gang raped, in 2015, the subject has been open.
We knew that something had to be done, especially since the medical profession is very feminized,”
admits a senior health official.
The reaction of doctors in a column, published by
Le Figaro
in 2017, who denounced a
“return of morality”
and a control of the administration on places of
“counter-power”,
changed nothing.
The frescoes in the on-call room at Tenon Hospital in Paris cheerfully mix styles, eras and positions in a large ensemble that has nothing to envy of the Kama-sutra.
Gilles Tondoni
Anxious to meet its “
obligation to ensure the health of hospital workers”
, the General Directorate of Healthcare Supply (DGOS) has published an
“instruction relating to so-called rifle frescoes”
.
According to this text of January 17, 2023, the removal of decorations
“of a pornographic and sexist nature”
must be done, after
“consultation with the various stakeholders”
.
A majority of hospitals, including Cochin, Henri-Mondor or Broca, are not affected.
Elsewhere, compliance work is carried out gradually, after consultation.
A spokesperson for the AP-HP
Over the last twelve months, the frescoes have fallen as in Gravelotte, and with them, a tradition in the history of medicine.
In Paris, maintenance workers at the Lariboisière, Georges-Pompidou and René-Muret hospitals complied and covered up the drawings of the crime.
Those of Necker, Bicêtre, Ambroise-Paré, Paul-Brousse are being erased.
“A majority of hospitals, including Cochin, Henri Mondor or Broca, are not affected.
Elsewhere, compliance work is carried out gradually, after consultation,”
explains the AP-HP spokesperson.
The Bretagne-Atlantique Hospital Center in Vannes has decided to follow suit, with the full support of the establishment medical commission.
Just like the hospitals of Versailles and Lille.
In Rennes, the South union is leading the charge in favor of withdrawal, despite opposition from some of the internal staff.
Please, Mr. President, do not allow them to be “
debunked”!
Letter sent by doctors to Emmanuel Macron
Impossible to witness these paint strokes - none of the hospitals acceded to our requests.
Because even the latter feel that this major “cost boost” – which other hospital corridors would really need – is not unanimous.
Currently, a petition launched by Michel Roy, doctor and former intern at Saint-Étienne University Hospital, is circulating.
It has already been signed by 4000 practitioners.
At the same time, a hundred other doctors took up their pens and wrote to the President of the Republic.
“The interns, practitioners in training and on the front line during their long days and nights of work, facing illness, death or even social poverty, found there, and still find there, a space of freedom and release, in a decor imagined by their predecessors or by themselves,
we can read in this letter obtained by
Le Figaro.
Please, Mr. President, do not allow them to be “debunked”!
»
Urological surgeon in Saint-Louis and signatory of the letter, Paul Meria admits that the affair is
“difficult to understand for those from the outside, who do not know these places, where humor and big jokes are legion”.
But, he wonders, should we nevertheless
“give in to a minority that takes offense?
".
A former Paris hospital intern, Paul Meria does not particularly cling to this “old world” denounced by feminists.
He would just like us to understand what the fierce spirit means which, in his eyes, is disintegrating little by little.
Is this due to the end of the intern competition?
The destruction of hospital spaces beyond all authority?
The weariness of younger generations in the face of esprit de corps?
The breakthrough of women in the medical profession?
The spread of Anglo-Saxon wokism?
Neither he nor his counterparts can very well explain the reasons for the fall of a culture that united generations.
At the head of the Association “The Pleasure of the Gods”, a bridgehead in the fight against the erasure of frescoes, Jean-Michel Graciès, professor at Henri-Mondor (Créteil), deplores this turning point.
“These rooms go back a long way and the first documented fresco is that of Charity, in 1859, dismantled during the destruction of the hospital and which is in the AP-HP museum
,” he underlines.
The creation of the frescoes, initially non-suggestive and rather comical, was most often entrusted to outside hands.
“Certain artists lived bohemian style and had an open table with the interns, in return for decorating the walls,”
he continues.
Let's mask what must be reversibly, accept the idea that they are part of the history of our guard rooms and above all let the interns create new ones which, in one way or another, will in turn reflect the current era
Jean-Michel Graciès, professor at Henri-Mondor
In hospitals, “each
era has had its style of frescoes, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, surrealist, or comic book aesthetics from the 1960s onwards”.
Puvis de Chavannes will be welcomed in Laënnec, Toulouse-Lautrec and Vuillard at the Hôtel-Dieu, Marie Laurencin in Saint-Louis, Dubout in Montpellier, then Cabu in Garches.
According to the professor, the obscene walls now decried appeared with the
“delirious and caricatured”
style of the 1970s. And the scenes took a more realistic turn from the 2000s.
“If these frescoes, described today as pornographic, are anachronistic and shock some people, we must take note of this
, continues Jean-Michel Graciès.
But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater: let's mask what needs to be masked in a reversible way, let's accept the idea that they are part of the history of our guard rooms and above all let's let the interns redo them. news which, in one way or another, will in turn reflect the current era.
The interns' room at the Charité hospital in 1860 represented by an engraving signed Gustave Doré.
AP-HP Archives
Received as a delegation at the Ministry of Health in July, the association pleaded for the safeguarding of this tangible and intangible heritage.
She failed.
His interlocutors listened to them “
politely”,
obviously without knowledge of the subject, nor desire to know more about
“the beneficial genius of these rites for the quality of life at work of the interns”
.
The same approach was carried out in front of officials from the Ministry of Culture last fall – with more listening.
“These traditions were born from the difficulty of learning the trade,”
he concludes.
By erasing them, we put an end to a place of fraternization with our peers.”
He, who spent several years practicing in the United States, sees in the current turmoil an importation
of American “societal conflicts”
.
So, he begins to hope that public hospitals will not fall headfirst into the “
cancellation”
of the culture of boarding schools and on-call rooms.