George Condo Plans Naked Portrait of Queen Elizabeth
Published: October 23, 2006
George Condo’s latest portrait of Queen Elizabeth as a Cabbage Patch Kid doll might be eliciting controversy at Tate Modern, but that’s nothing compared to what the artist has up his sleeve for his next creation, The Mirror reports. Condo is planning a nude portrait of the Queen. "I'm told you can't show members of the Royal Family naked in a public institution,” he said. “But I'll be working on it next." The current portrait, Dreams and Nightmares of the Queen, is one of nine paintings focusing on the monarch, including one with a carrot through her head. Condo’s portraits sell for £1 million and up. The New York-based artist said the point of the series is to “get over how the Queen imagines herself.” Condo is not the first to depict the Queen in an unflattering light—Lucian Freud made her look like she'd swallowed a wasp, and Rolf Harris nearly ended up painting her as “a pork butcher.” In 1996, Anthony Williams aged her and gave her “sausage fingers,” while a year later Justin Mortimer floated her head above her body.
But Brendan Kelly, of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, said he’s not impressed with the latest rendition. "This is embarrassingly bad," he said. |
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