You probably don’t care but there was a rather debated healthcare reform in France recently.
What might get your attention however, is that the debate quickly changed from talking about the system itself… to debating whether or not Wonder Woman was raped or not in a pornographic painting posted on Facebook by medical interns of the french city of Clermont-Ferrand.
Soon, the whole country started asking the same question: why the fuck was there a gigantic pornographic painting in that hospital ?
And the French woke up discovering that there were such paintings in a most hospitals in Paris, and in a few other cities. Let me explain, by starting with the picture that started it all :
The painting was posted by intern doctors of Clermont-Ferrand. Superman, here above, says “Take this, healthcare reform !” and the Flash (who’s already coming of course), adds : “Try to know what you are talking about”. Therefore, we understand that poor Wonder Woman is the Healthcare reform, or the minister herself — even if the interns, girls and boys alike insisted that they were the ones being fucked by the ministry.
In the end, the painting was erased and the whole country discovered the centuries old tradition of Guardroom frescoes, in Paris and other french cities. It has produced huge works of art, notably by french artist Gustave Doré.
I decided to search for the perfect guy to introduce me to that secret art. What I discovered was much more than just wall porn: a secret society with its own rituals, taking place all over France but mostly in the city of lights.
His name is Gilles Tondini. He is the author and photograph of the book The Obscene Image: Parisian Hospital Break Room Graffiti.
He has walked through all these guardrooms in order to capture the lecherous aesthetic of the medical corps’ dark side. He told me that, in the beginning, frescoes which adorned guardrooms depicted in a very dignified way the values of medicine. In the XIXth century, Gustave Doré — the fabulous artist who accomplished the Dante’s Inferno engravings — was the first to indulge in caricature with a work for the Hopital de la Charité, in the middle of the century :
« This mutation has led to a certain acceleration of the sexual liberation and amplification up to the present day”.
The history of the frescoes is linked to the history of guardrooms. Can you explain me how ?
Gilles Tondini. It’s absolutely certain that you can’t simply extract the graphic expression in the guardrooms without talking about the whole folklore. We already know the bawdy popular songs of the french medical students ( they are called « carabins » ) which uses mainly vulgar words, dwell on pornographic subjects, but also evoke the interns student’s hard conditions, the place’s insalubrity, veneral diseases, death…. That’s quite ancient. And frescoes appeared rather late in this folklore.
For my part, I consider that the graphic expression in these guardrooms is like cave paintings, in the sense that they are intended to a self centered community. It’s a form a clanic expression which sanctuarise the community through a common place. This kind of painting talk about the clan, its achievements, its history in a definite place. A person outside of this group can’t figure what is being shown on the fresco, who are these characters, what are their status, their roles, their history.
When did the interns start to painting their walls with, dicks, cunts and more or less turgid organs and who started to do so ?
Each era had it style, academism or caricature. In the beginning, frescoes which ornamented the guardrooms walls depicted in a very dignified manner the medical values. A long turn operated in the middle of the 19th century with Gustave Doré’s work, Esculape, in the Hopital de la Charité. And with the painter Bellery-Desfontaines, in the years 1890, who discreetly began caricature.
This mutation has accelerated with the sexual liberation and has amplified up to the present day. One can imagine that the content will change accordingly to the recruitment, as women are more and more present in medical jobs. But this is only pure speculation. For those who are interested, I advise you to read the book of Jacques Le Pesteur, who is extremely well documented on guardrooms history.
Could you take us on a tour and show us some of these frescoes, please ?
Fernand Widal has been closed but it’s probably one of my favorite. I experienced a great moment of emotion when I opened the door to this guardroom, which possess a small inner court. Walls were still vibrating with a lost fizzing. Today, this guardroom has been transformed in offices and its walls must be desperately clean, like a Kafka’s bad novel.
Bichat Claude Bernard, a pleasure palace…
In Gustave Roussy, the guardroom paintings takes on more adult themes. The perfect place to create a copy of the famous Courbet’s Naissance du Monde.
Antoine Beclère is the typical example of suburban guardroom which work perfectly fine. There, I met an exemplary bursarship crew, with a tremendous dynamism and zany initiatives.
This is a new guardroom in Necker’s hospital. I love it when they replace the old one, it’s always a source of joy ! In the background, a fresco in progress admirably done by an intern. This one has been rewarded as best achievement in 2011.
The bestiary of Tonon…
Mignot in Versailles is the Paris area guardroom’s outpost. With its luxury pool, it’s quite like a “Seychelles sur Seine” resort.
In your expedition, were you able to classify the different frescoes and practices ?
There isn’t a proper typology which can help us to classify these frescoes. However, you have to know that, in their making, all frescoes must meet two requirements. First, the frescoes have the purpose to be a mark of the special spirit of the doctor’s bursarship crew. So the artist is more or less free concerning the subject, situations, colors and graphics elements which will constitute the work. He has the difficult job to make a fresco that embodies the crew !
And it’s even more so, be cause, secondly, it has to depict the busarship crew at the moment of the fresco’s creation and whoever has been chosen to be on it. By order of appearance, you will necessarily have the bursar, the bursar’s assistants, the secretary, the treasurer and the cellarman. Then, optionally, you can add the managers, directors and, more seldomly, some parasites. Everyone is of course is invested with attributes, staged in necessarily compromising, grotesques, satirical situations but always funny and friendly.
In the beginning of your book, we can read an opinion column by Jacques Le Pesteur, who focuses on the paradox of these frescoes : “On the walls, the painful, dirty and asexual body left on an hospital bed become desire, youth and vigor through the grotesque characters engaging in a daring manner.” How can you explain such a proximity between death… and orgy ?
This opinion column has been written by a intern collective and its conclusion made by the late Jacques Le Pesteur, physician by trade, who left us an amazing book : “Fresques de salle de garde”. Most of the time, we talk about Eros and Thanatos, two opposite pulsions, nonetheless complementary. This is for me the most appropriate analysis. Indeed, the intern’s vitality always prevails against the horrors he sees.
In your memorandum, you describe yourself as an “anthropologist following the footprints of a lost civilization”, and I know that these frescoes aren’t the sole odd customs of this shady tribe. What about the guardroom’s head, the bursarship, and the ban of medical topics in the room… all the forfeits interns can get if they disobey to those playful guardroom rules ?
The guardroom is built around a much more complex traditional folklore which mainly includes the guardroom regulation. It’s a rather package of rules, inherited from the elders but adapted by the bursarhsip’s head, because he reigns as the one and only master. Among theirs habits, we can talk again of the obscenity, recounting intern’s achievements, internship life, tonus (french parties organized by students in medicine), traditional diners which mark the bi-annual interns movement from one service to another. As far as I know, all of these guardrooms traditions are a a true French cultural exception.
If you want to know more about those strange customs, you can read the exceptional book by Jacques Le Pesteur, but I also recommend the very well documented works by Dr Patrice Josset and Bastien Thelliez.
How do hospital’s managers, so serious, so aloof in their attitude, can tolerate to be portrayed as orgy members ?
Is there a better way to question his status in a playfully and incisive mode ? I dare imagine that, for such medicine great big shots, it’s a real fountain of youth. What would science become without a continuously re-assessment ? The fact of accepting that young student play with your image, lampoon you, is also a way to strengthen your place among the others. If you accept to be ridiculed, they you truly deserve to be respected.
In your book, you often worry about the disappearance of the frescoes you immortalized. What might happen to them exactly ?
A pure and simple disappearance ! Examples are as dramatic as numerous : Fernand Widal, la Salpetriere… their destruction are all small blows to the history of internship . They are killing a unique cultural exception, and honestly, I live these closures as amputations !
