>>> The News: JAY KAY!
By staff writer Amir Blumenfeld
October 13, 2004
The real news (for boring people)
The breakdown (for college people)
Painting of Nude Bush Removed From Museum
By CARL HARTMAN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – A cartoonish painting of President Bush in the nude has been taken down from the wall at the City Museum of Washington. The picture, called “Man of Leisure, King George,” adopts the pose of a famous Impressionist painting, Edouard Manet's “Olympia,” that scandalized Paris in 1863, and now hangs in the Gare d'Orsay Museum in Paris.
Just to clarify, Edouard Manet's painting was of George Bush SR.! So there are some differences there.
The painting by local artist Kayti Didriksen, shows a caricature of Bush, reclining in the nude on a chaise lounge, his head propped up by pillows.
How weird does it feel that somewhere, at some point in your life, you were carefully painting George Bush's dick. “Does this nutsack look right to you?”
Instead of the female servant who stands behind Olympia's couch, a man in suit and tie resembling Vice President Dick Cheney stands nearby, holding a cushion with a crown and a miniature oil rig on top of it.
Watch me not make a joke about Dick Cheney's name. Go aHEAD, watch me not make a dick joke.
The painting was part of a “living room art” show called “Funky Furniture” — a variety of painted furniture and other items that were set up in the museum last week.
Well, I suppose our naked president WOULD make for a “Funky” reclining chair.
Expected to formally open this month, the show, including the Bush painting, was abruptly shut down Monday after some of the artists' themes were considered unsuitable.
Yet the one where Edwards is giving Kerry a beej was left in. EXPLAIN THAT TO ME!
Myra Peabody Gossens, a public relations consultant for the museum, said the exhibit was not what had been expected.
“We expected THREE naked paintings of the president. But we're wacky like that!!!”
“The museum is not an art museum,” she explained. “It gets mostly groups of children, with teachers trying to tell them something about history.”
“And THAT'S where the Bush twins were just sperm…”
In addition to the Bush painting, the exhibit included a decorated church pew with pictures and writing that accused former President Reagan of ignoring the AIDS crisis and an end table decorated with drug paraphernalia with a quote from former District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry, who was jailed for drug possession.
So we can have pews but no pubes? Un real.
“This is not what we were bargaining for. We thought we were getting functional furniture,” Leslie Shapiro, co-chairman of the museum's board of directors, told the Washington Post.
As she sat firmly on the taxidermied corpse of Richard Nixon that had been made into a stool.
The City Museum of Washington, operated by the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., is primarily a place where local and regional history is on display. The museum's executive board decided the museum was “not an appropriate venue” for the exhibit.
“Can I recommend the TGI Fridays on Third?”
Art-O-Matic 2004, a confederation of local artists which organized the project, now is looking for another space to house the exhibit, said Jim Tretick, a member of the group's board of directors.
Judging by the name of that art group I assume they just crank paintings out like those five at a time!
“About a dozen people may have seen it on Sunday,” said Tretick. “The exhibit wasn't completely mounted. Then it was taken down on Monday when the museum was closed.”
“And like…on Tuesday I had a sandwich…then WEDNESDAY! Oh man, Wednesday my girlfriend came over, well, actually… a girl that I'd LIKE to be my girlfriend, but she says she just got outta this LONG relationship and…ahahaa…hey where you guys going?!!”