A lot of thought has been put into the Italian proverb - Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it’s been proven right yet again. It’s a common belief that all men like women who don’t have sagging body parts. Maybe this belief is way off, last week Christie’s auction house sold a painting of a nude fat lady sleeping on a couch with her belly reaching for the floor, for a mind blowing $33.6 million. Believe that?
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping - as the painting is called is the work of UK artist Lucian Freud, grandson of psycho-analyst Sigmund Freud. The sale is a new record for the most money paid for a painting by a living artist.
Fifty one year old Sue Tilley is the poser in the painting and she works for a government-run job center in London.
Sue mentioned that she initially felt embarrassed to pose naked in front the 85 year old painter. Later she was so comfortable that he could see nothing but her fat deposits and peacefully fell asleep.
“I didn’t mind if he noticed,” she said.
Here’s the best part - With Tilley, Freud said he was “very aware of all kinds of spectacular things to do with her size, like amazing craters and things one’s never seen before,” according to the 2002 interview with the Tate. He added, “I have perhaps a predilection towards people of unusual or strange proportions, which I don’t want to over-indulge.”
Coming back to reality rather than the artistic world. Sue must be thanking her stars for all the accumulated fat around her body. Nobody would have noticed this fat lady but for the popularity she gained through the painting. People are not awing over the painting but the nutty price it was sold for.
via CNN
I’m happy someone was willing to cough up the dough to take this monstrosity off the market. I hope we never ever ever have to see this nauseating hideosity again. Baaarf. Gag.
It’s so sad that only painters see the beauty of this woman.
She is quite the work of art herself.
If she was a stick no one would have painted her.
She’s beautiful just the way she is.