Nude painting of Harper snags $5,000
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Digital Subscription
One year of digital access for only $205*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional
$1 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/05/2012 (5165 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
TORONTO — A Kingston, Ont.-based artist’s painting of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the nude has been sold.
Margaret Sutherland posted on Facebook there was a “tsunami of press and offers to buy” the painting during the Victoria Day weekend.
The large oil on canvas, which Stephen Harper did not pose for, shows the prime minister reclining on a chaise lounge wearing nothing but a subtle smile. A dog rests at his feet as a woman in business attire offers him what looks like a Tim Hortons cup on a silver platter.
The Edward Day Gallery in Toronto isn’t saying who purchased the painting for $5,000.
Gallery owner Mary Sue Rankin said amid all the hubub the painting has created, Sutherland’s piece has a serious message about Harper not living up to his promises.
For Sutherland, who completed the painting last year, the point of her piece was a satirical one. “It was a sort of a culmination of some general frustrations of the federal government’s policies and what they were telling us,” Sutherland had said, adding she had been peeved with the government’s elimination of the long-form census and its closure of certain prison farms.
“The political message is to look for yourself and don’t necessarily believe the party line.”
The painting — Emperor Haute Couture — is also part of the pun as it carries a reference to The Emperor’s New Clothes, a tale by Hans Christian Andersen in which a vain king parades around naked, believing his new suit is so superior that it’s invisible to those unfit for their positions in life.
The painting is displayed at the Kingston public library as a finalist in the Juried Art Salon, a competition hosted by the Kingston Arts Council.
— The Canadian Press