The Removal of Nakedness

by ruth barker, 24 Mar 2009

Hello,

I was going to post this as a News item, but I decided I couldn’t really justify it. After all, it isn’t exactly public art – or is it? I still think it might be. Anyone else have an opinion?
It did make me laugh though, so I thought I’d stick it here instead.

It seems that some joker / intervention artist [delete as applicable] has painted a naked portrait of Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen, and then sneakily inserted it into the Royal Hibernian Academy gallery in Dublin. A similar painting, depicting Mr Cowen on the lavatory, was snuck into the National Gallery, also in Dublin. The latter work apparently went unnoticed in the collection for at least 20 minutes, although the National Gallery has called the police in to investigate.

Squinting at the tiny pic available on the BBC website here, I quite like the little painting, but who am I to judge? It seems that the authorities are taking a dim view.

I know it’s not new – Banksy did it ages ago – but I quite like news of this sort. There’s nothing like a bit of irreverance, I find. And I’m all for painting as a radical medium.

More later,
R