There has been a marked uptick in the number of celebrity nudes in the news.
And not in a good way, either.
South African president Jacob Zuma, who, I venture to guess, is hardly anyone’s idea of a fun one-night stand, was recently depicted as a full-frontal nude, dangly bits and all, in a painting that appeared in a Johannesburg art gallery.
President Zuma did not pose for the portrait, nor was he amused at its public unveiling.
In fact, his party, the African National Congress, condemned the work as indecent. Lawsuits have been launched against the artist, a Johannesburg newspaper that showed a photo of the painting, and the gallery that displayed it.
A similar story is evolving closer to home, where Kingston, Ontario artist, Margaret Sutherland has given us a large oil-on-canvas portrait of a pudgy chap reclining on a chaise lounge with a dog at his feet.
Next to the subject, a woman is proffering a silver platter holding what looks like a Tim Horton’s double-double to go. The server is wearing a woman’s business suit. The fellow on the couch? He’s wearing a smile.
Just … a smile. And here’s the riveting part (you might want to bundle the kids off to the rec room before I go on…)
The chubby with the stubby on the sofa is Stephen Harper.
Want a peek? Of course you don’t — who would? It’s too late anyway.
The painting, which was briefly on display in a gallery in Toronto, has already been snapped up for $5,000.
No word on who the buyer was but I’m guessing it wasn’t Cosmopolitan magazine in search of next month’s centrefold.
I don’t know South Africa’s president Zuma well enough to reliably gauge his physiological hotness, but I’ve seen plenty of the Canadian PM.
And I have to wonder: what on earth would possess an artist — any artist — to bend his or her artistic talents toward a depiction of a naked Stephen Harper?
Perhaps it’s the sheer unlikelihood of it all. Stephen Harper starkers is like Mona Lisa with a nose ring, or Sidney Crosby on a pogo stick.
Speaking of artistic unlikelihood’s, you know that famous painting The Scream? The one that shows a cartoon figure shrieking on a bridge against a blood-red sunset?
It was painted by Edvard Munsch, a Norwegian artist, 117 years ago and it just sold at a private auction for — maybe you’d like to join the kids in the rec room before I go on. Take along a damp washcloth for your forehead…
…One hundred and twenty million dollars.
Is The Scream — is any painting — worth $120 million? I guess it is if you can find somebody willing to pay that kind of dough, and somebody did.
Art critic Felix Salmon would disagree. He says that what the unknown buyer paid for wasn’t art, but “a century’s worth of marketing and hype.”
Perhaps so, but it gives a new resonance to the term ‘obscene art.’
Now if it were possible for some art gallery to corral all three paintings and turn them into a triptych that shows the subject in The Scream reacting to the paintings of President Zuma and Prime Minister Harper.
It still wouldn’t be worth $120 million but it would be a tribute to truth in advertising.
