行為藝術家侯貝緹（Deborah de Robertis）於2014年進行了一場行為藝術：在庫爾貝（Gustave Courbet）的畫作《世界的起源》（The Origin of the World/L’Origine du monde）前，向公眾展出自己的性器官，並旋即遭館方阻擋、驅逐。這場行為藝術除了引發軒然大波，亦指出了當代藝術與審查的矛盾：為何庫爾貝的《世界的起源》能公開展示，侯貝緹卻不行？早在2011年，法國一名教師就曾因在臉書上傳《世界的起源》的圖片遭停權，經八年跨國訴訟才達成協議。這類層出不窮的藝術與社會規範衝突的問題，對當代藝術而言實屢見不鮮；藝術社會學家艾妮克（Nathalie Heinich）指出，此即當代藝術「寬容的矛盾」特質。

Performance artist Deborah de Robertis performed at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris on May 29, 2014, she showed her sexual organs to the public in front of Gustave Courbet’s work ‘The Origin of the World’, and was immediately stopped, and persuaded to leave by the exhibition’s female staff. This performance art caused an uproar, but also pointed out the central question of the aesthetic value of contemporary art: censorship. At 2011, Frédéric Durand-Baïssas, a French teacher, was suspended by Facebook for posting a picture of The Origin of the World on Facebook. Such cases of “challenging social norms in the name of art” are not uncommon in the field of contemporary art. These kinds of contemporary art creations, with their tendency to challenge norms, point to the core of contemporary art. Nathalie Heinich, sociologist of art, has analyzed this “tolerant contradiction” of contemporary art.