Chelsea Clinton Joke Let Me See That Map Again
Given the hurricane-force storm of media attention swirling around the example of Jeffrey Epstein, the news that he owned a particularly foreign work of art perhaps doesn't seem like the biggest of deals. After all, the aggressively unsettling decor of Epstein's homes, which includes displays of prosthetic eyeballs, a female mannequin hanging from a chandelier, and a chessboard whose pieces featured the likenesses of his staff clad merely in underwear, was already well established.
This particular piece of work of fine art, however, features an image of former president Pecker Clinton clad in a blueish dress and high heels, gesturing to the viewer. Given that Bill Clinton'southward proper noun has been prominently connected to Epstein, word of the painting sent the net conspiracy machine wild.
The original source of the gossip is the non-exactly-reliable Daily Mail, which quotes an unnamed source who snapped a photo of the unsettling Clinton painting through a doorway at Epstein'due south $56 million domicile in 2012. (The Postal service claimed it had seen metadata verifying the location and date of the photograph.) The New York Post, picking up the story, quoted some other anonymous source maxim of the painting, "Information technology was hanging upwardly there prominently—as shortly as you walked in—in a room to the right. Everybody who saw it laughed and smirked."
The forepart of Jeffrey Epstein's residence at 9 Eastward 71st Street in the borough of Manhattan, New York on July 18, 2019 in New York City. Photograph by Scott Heins/Getty Images.
The painting has been identified equally Parsing Bill past New York-based Australian creative person Petrina Ryan-Kleid. (A print version is available on Saatchi Art starting at $40.) The more feverish corners of the internet immediately began to decode the imagery for clues—but the truth is that information technology was part of a body of student work produced quite independently of Epstein.
The Clinton painting comes from a pair of works past Ryan-Kleid that lightly satirized political figures. Its companion, a painting of George Due west. Bush chosen War Games, features the former president sitting on the floor of the White House playing with paper airplanes and 2 fallen Jenga towers, referencing his manipulation of the attacks of 9/11 to justify war in Iraq, the defining scandal of Bush's White House tenure. As for Parsing Nib, the bluish apparel seems a likely reference to the blue dress that served as prove in the former president'southward affair with Monica Lewinsky, the scandal that marked Clinton'due south time in office.
Petrina Ryan-Kleid, War Games (2012). Image via the New York Academy of Art.
Parsing Pecker and War Games were shown at the 2012 Tribeca Ball, a fundraiser for Ryan-Kleid'southward alma mater, the New York Academy of Art. Photos from A Guest of a Guest, a political party blog, show the artist posing in front of the two works at the star-studded event.
Earlier today, Ryan-Kleid said in a statement to artnet News that she had no thought where the painting had ended up until she saw it light up the news yestereday:
In 2012, as a grad student at the New York Academy of Art, I painted pictures of Presidents Bill Clinton and Bush as role of my Principal'due south thesis. When the school put on a fundraiser at the Tribeca Ball that year, they sold my painting to one of the attendees. I had no idea who the heir-apparent was at the time. As with virtually of my paintings, I had completely lost track of this piece when information technology was sold seven years ago. Then it was a complete surprise to me to acquire yesterday that it wound up in Epstein'south home.
[UPDATE: Petrina Ryan-Kleid spoke to artnet in more detail about the origin and meaning of the paintings: "The Artist Behind Jeffrey Epstein'south Portrait of Bill Clinton in a Dress Tells United states of america Why She Made It, and What It Means".]
Later on graduating from the New York University of Fine art, Ryan-Kleid worked equally a studio banana for Jeff Koons in 2015 and 2016 and at present does social media marketing for artists in New York.
Aside from general titillation, it is unclear how, exactly, the Clinton painting might fit into the many conspiracy theories swirling effectually the apparent suicide by the 66-year-old bedevilled pedophile, which take included president Donald Trump retweeting a theory that the Clintons had Epstein killed. Bill Clinton is documented to have flown on Epstein'south airplane in 2002 and 2003, and says that he visited Epstein'southward home in 2002, but issued a statement noting that he was accompanied by staff and his security detail at all times.
(Donald Trump, for his function, is also known to have spent time with Epstein, and infamously remarked to New York magazine that the financier was "terrific" and "likes cute women as much equally I practise, and many of them are on the younger side.")
It is certainly possible to read the painting every bit a reminder past Epstein to himself and to guests that he had dirt on powerful people. Just then again, the common denominator of all of Epstein'southward known decor, and then far, is simply that he had a taste for the cartoonishly sadistic.
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Source: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/bill-clinton-blue-dress-painting-jeffrey-epstein-1628437
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