I wonder if Abramovitch is in the market for some of my paintings? I
'd do it (a) to earn a living and (b) piss off the sanctimonious.
Roger
On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 6:33 PM, David Bircumshaw
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> More on BIG SUE: it seems the buyer was Roman Abramovitch, the 11
> times billionaire owner of Chelsea football club. He also bought
> Francis Bacon's Triptych for 44 million.
>
> So that's what art's about. Something to hang on the walls of the
> suspiciously rich. Poets should be glad they're not appreciated. Their
> fates could be much worse.
>
>
> Best
>
> Dave
>
> 2008/5/14 Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>:
>> It's rather like going to an old-fashioned British seaside
>>> resort to discover at the beach a portly lady out of picture postcard,
>>> in a floral dress, swinging a huge handbag, emerging wringing wet from
>>> the waves calling 'Yoo-hoo, it's me, your Auntie Mabel. THAT WHICH I
>>> AM I AM. I'm over here'
>>>
>>> Best
>>>
>>> Dave
>>>
>> or Big Sue:
>>
>> http://news.uk.msn.com/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=8298490
>>
>> - shows her picture:
>>
>> A life-size Lucian Freud painting of a naked Jobcentre supervisor sleeping
>> broke the world auction record for a work by a living artist when it sold
>> for more than £17 million, Christie's said.
>>
>> The masterpiece, which was sold by a private European collector, fetched
>> 33.6 million dollars (£17.2 million) in the sale at New York's Rockefeller
>> Centre.
>>
>> Benefits Supervisor Sleeping beat the previous world auction record for a
>> work by a living artist, held by Jeff Koons' Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold),
>> which fetched 23.5 million dollars (£11.3 million) last year.
>>
>> The 1995 Freud painting depicts rotund London benefits supervisor Sue
>> Tilley, now 51, sleeping on a dilapidated sofa.
>>
>> Ms Tilley, now a Jobcentre manager, said: "I'm thrilled. I still can't
>> believe such a bizarre thing has happened to me. It hasn't sunk in
>> properly."
>>
>> Asked how she felt about posing nude, she said: "At first, I was a little
>> bit embarrassed but after a while I just got used to it and it became a
>> completely normal thing to do, like going to the doctor."
>>
>> She also said reports claiming that she had weighed 20st when she posed for
>> the painting were inaccurate and said she did not know how much she weighed
>> today. "I never weigh myself because I can't be bothered," she said.
>>
>> Asked if she would ever sit for another artist, Ms Tilley said it was "hard
>> to know where to go" as she had "started with the very best".
>>
>> It was the first time Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, which was the
>> highlight of Christie's New York Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale,
>> had appeared at auction.
>>
>> The 85-year-old British artist first painted "Big Sue" in Evening In The
>> Studio (1993), for which Ms Tilley had to lie in an uncomfortable pose on a
>> bare floor. Freud then bought the ragged sofa depicted in the 1995 painting
>> for Ms Tilley, who was introduced to Freud by Australian performance artist
>> Leigh Bowery, to lie on.
>>
>
>
>
> --
> David Bircumshaw
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>
--
My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
"She went out with her paint box, paints the chapel blue
She went out with her matches, torched the car-wash too"
The Go-Betweens
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