Daily Golden Girls

Get ready. Hold on to your hats, socks, and anything else that might fly off. Artist John Curin created an amazing nude portrait of Bea Arthur in 1991. I had never seen this before. It reminds me of my favorite bumper sticker that I have ever seen, "Bea Arthur, Be Naked."

I know that you are too busy being amazed by this, but pull yourself together and read some critique:
Currin's painting, on the other hand, seems relatively restrained, evincing an almost Cycladic elegance and symmetry. Scarcely the sort of conclusion one would expect? Even in the case of one of Currin's most deservedly famous, or notorious, early paintings, Bea Arthur Naked (1991), the sitcom star preserves a certain restraint, dignity even, that militates against the overtly camp/kitsch (or possibly anti-feminist) readings of the picture that so readily come to mind. Perhaps the Arthur portrait is going rather against the grain of the Currin mode, even as it was only coalescing in the early 1990s - the exception that, maybe, proves the rule of perversion.