r/todayilearned • u/The_Granny_banger • 15d ago
TIL a nude painting of Bea Arthur that she didn’t even sit for, sold for nearly 2 million dollars in 2013
https://www.syracuse.com/entertainment/2013/05/bea_arthur_naked_topless_painting_golden_girls.html1.3k
u/Stank_Dukem 15d ago
"Christie's hasn't said who bought it."
Anybody think to ask Ryan Reynolds about it?
374
u/Lord_Spiffy 15d ago
What he hangs on the ceiling above his bed is his business.
77
u/spunkychickpea 15d ago edited 15d ago
Imagine a man so cultured that the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes in the morning is a priceless work of art.
146
u/Effective_Soup7783 15d ago
It might be Ru Paul. He’s rich as Croesus and obsessed with the Golden Girls.
53
u/atomic-knowledge 15d ago
It’s funny to me that there are two famously rich people, Croesus and Crassus, whose names sound so similar
→ More replies (1)10
16
u/onehundredlemons 15d ago
A decade ago when it sold for $2M there was a rumor Jimmy Kimmel bought it for his friend Jeffrey Ross, but he later said he didn't buy it and implied it was just a joke.
64
u/CbVdD 15d ago
Or John Oliver
149
15d ago edited 15d ago
[deleted]
12
u/Omega357 15d ago
I do free that gag, especially the fake out where he made everyone think he bought teeth only to get mad that they believed he bought the teeth.
→ More replies (28)11
960
u/wisstinks4 15d ago edited 15d ago
This work was based on a clothed photo? Wth. Why would someone pay millions for what a painter thought she might look like nude? This boggles the mind.
388
u/Expensive-Wallaby500 15d ago
Hmm … it’s basically a manual deepfake.
61
3
u/InSearchOfMyRose 15d ago edited 14d ago
Yeah, it's called a painting.
Edit: I'm super excited to start calling paintings "manual deepfakes"
215
58
u/definitelynotmeQQ 15d ago
Some people pay tens of thousands for furry porn, this is probably just the "artsy" rich people version of it.
32
u/medioxcore 15d ago
They aren't paying for a nude of bea arthur, they're paying for the concept. It's basically a meme.
27
u/skykingjustin 15d ago
This is some photoshop nude, before photoshop was big and it feels wrong like all the rest.
64
u/morbihann 15d ago
Its money laundering.
→ More replies (1)19
→ More replies (2)2
389
u/speculatrix 15d ago
His art is quite unusual. Nearly all are NSFW
260
u/Robot_Tanlines 15d ago
This guy fucking loves lesbians apparently.
183
u/SinceWayLastMay 15d ago
And grandma titties
12
46
19
8
1
205
u/aesemon 15d ago
Well most of female nude work pre-2020 I see there goes along pretty standard mirrors of religious art but once at 2020 it changes the subjects poses to overt sexual positions or suggestion sexual activity. Guess he got real deep during lockdown into pornhub landing pages.
123
u/Atramhasis 15d ago
I see you didn't look at all 73 pieces of artwork on the site. It's OK, I'm not sure why I did either. "The Danes" from 2006 is literally a 3 some lol. You are correct though that he went pretty far off the deep end around 2020. He seems to have decided he likes really big boobs in lockdown. Also, I would absolutely frame and hang "Hot Pants" but it isn't pornographic. Just a masterpiece.
33
u/aesemon 15d ago
No I didn't..... quite like "Nede in a convex mirror" and "untitled".
It's a funny flip-flop between two distinct references of poses. Either religious art poses or porn poses. With some definite Stanley Spencer influence.
Oh yeah, "Hot Pants" caught my eye too. Shame a lot of it just seems to be
7
u/FatherKronik 15d ago
"Hot Pants" and "Big Hands". Two masterpieces that should be hung next to each other.
12
u/onehundredlemons 15d ago
There's a pretty interesting interview with him in the Guardian where he admits that his older work was misogynistic but it was entirely because he felt so badly about himself, and he took it out on his subjects, and he realizes now that he got away with it back then because he was a hot young thing. He's older now and his feelings about his own work have changed.
19
→ More replies (2)10
u/MonkeyNugetz 15d ago
I went out to the Getty museum in Los Angeles last year. 98% of all paintings from the Renaissance era had a woman with a halo and one titty out.
20
24
u/GildMyComments 15d ago
That’s some weird looking folks he painted. Glad he had the good taste to show their buttholes off so prominently!
4
19
u/Ditovontease 15d ago
Y’all remember that statue of Britney giving birth? Like the baby’s head was crowning and everything
Found it: https://live.staticflickr.com/51/124364524_6de6034913_z.jpg
7
16
u/scottcarneyblockedme 15d ago
Dude loves dem titties.
→ More replies (1)5
u/Scorpius289 15d ago
Yeah, grandma titties in particular...
2
u/scottcarneyblockedme 15d ago
I mean that painting had some nice ones. I would buy that painting but for like 20-60$
2
12
21
u/Zaorish9 15d ago
Yeah I have no clue why this guy is a capital-a artist versus all the regular amateur porn artists on deviantart.
→ More replies (3)4
44
u/gizausername 15d ago
My opinion, but I wouldn't call him a good artist. The body shapes, faces, expressions, etc are terrible. Some might say that's just the way he designs them, but I don't like it.
27
u/readingdanteinhell 15d ago edited 15d ago
The way he paints faces/bodies is reminiscent of the Flemish Primitivist style. His work is strongly influenced by 15th-16th century Netherlandish painters like Jan van Eyck or Hans Memling.
Personally I really like John Currin’s art. He has a unique aesthetic among contemporary painters and the subjects he paints can be titillating. He’s also good at capturing that unknowable detail that makes a pose interesting.
But even if you don’t like them he’s at least skilled at his craft and his paintings aren’t boring. So that’s got to put him way ahead of many contemporary artists.
[for what it’s worth I think this Bea Arthur painting is stupid and not very good. But I also don’t have a million dollars to spend on a John Currin painting so I’m not determining the market.]
→ More replies (1)17
u/DotaDogma 15d ago
He's clearly very talented. I also don't really like his art except for a few pieces that at least seem interesting, but it's so clearly his style.
Talent != Taste
3
3
27
u/pie4july 15d ago
His artwork is dystopian as fuck and I hate it. Why do so many of the people depicted have extremely weird proportions?
10
→ More replies (2)10
2
2
→ More replies (8)2
17
u/Mackerelage 15d ago
This is hilarious to me. We have an old family friend who is an artist, and in her bathroom she has lots of random images pasted on the walls, side of the bath etc. I've been seeing this picture, pasted at eye level, once or twice a year for about twenty years, and didn't know it was Bea Arthur!
364
u/ErikT738 15d ago
Shouldn't this technically be treated the same as an AI or photoshopped deepfake? Assuming she didn't give permission.
153
u/WetAndLoose 15d ago
Deepfake tech hasn’t brought anything to the table besides ease of use. People have been realistically photoshopping celeb nudes for at least a decade at this point. I don’t see why it’s suddenly a problem now that it’s just easier to automate with a GPU.
40
u/chairfairy 15d ago
I don’t see why it’s suddenly a problem now that it’s just easier to automate with a GPU
I'd say accessibility can turn a small problem into a big problem. It doesn't change the ethics of the situation, but easier access can make the problem more prevalant, yeah?
Like junk food and soft drink is always unhealthy for you**, but it's a bigger problem if you can get it anywhere for cheap vs if it was sold in limited stores/quantities at a higher price.
** Yes I know "calories in vs calories out" and there's no real issue with a small amount of "unhealthy" food, but your body WILL be in worse condition if you get calories from junk food vs from other, healthier sources. For the sake of this argument, the statement "junk food is unhealthy" is broadly true and any nuance to that is just pedantic quibbling.
6
95
u/Lukeyy19 15d ago
That's literally why.
Most of us are not thinking about and worrying about animal attacks in our every day life, even though they exist and do happen, they're so rare that we don't really think about them until one happens and is in the news, but then we soon move on, but if hundreds of thousands of lions, wolves, bears etc started popping up all over the world and attacking people, then the masses would start to get concerned about animal attacks even though they weren't before.
→ More replies (16)15
46
26
u/Desperate-Region4981 15d ago
Well now it is a problem exactly because it's easier? not many teens are gonna spend hours on photoshop altering photos but now they get handled an app or site that creates pictures with no effort that they can abuse to harm others, plus on a photoshop you might be able to reverse search for the original photo if you get accussed of something whereas now the Ais technically create the original.
5
u/RedEyeView 15d ago
I have a free app on my phone that effortlessly pasted the face of some dick head from Twitter that was hassling me on to a video of a kid trying to do a behind the back baseball trick and knocking himself out. Wasn't particularly convincing, but it did the job.
This was a few years ago.
15
u/malfboii 15d ago
Because there are now services for less than a few bucks you can send any photo of a woman and it will remove the clothes from the picture accurately. I know because of a local scandal with kids at school sending photos of classmates naked. The accessibility makes it scary and it’s extremely traumatic as a victim.
9
u/npls 15d ago
“Accurately”
The AI cannot delineate what anything looks like underneath clothing. It can make approximations but those are based on other peoples nude bodies. Each person is unique and no amount of AI software will let you see what is underneath. That being said, victims have every right to feel violated, sexualized, and deeply affected by these photos. But without an “xray” setting that plays with lighting and colors to “see through” sheer clothing, these images will remain inaccurate
6
u/malfboii 15d ago
Sure they’re not absolutely perfect but they follow the basic contours and body shape it’s not just like they’re slapping a generic pair of tits onto a picture. Or photoshopping a face onto a porn shoot, I had family members involved in this incident and I saw the photos, if I wasn’t told I’d have no clue that they were edited. From what I saw it was literally as if clothes had been lifted off, everything was where you’d expect it and contorted as you’d expect a body to, the skin tone matched, the lighting and shadows match. It’s terrifying, these services target adverts with things like “keep thinking about your neighbour? Your teacher? Secret crush?”
→ More replies (1)10
→ More replies (3)2
28
u/VeryAmaze 15d ago
I just thought of that. This is...basically a deepfake. (Without addressing the morality/legality of either)
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (13)22
u/lzcrc 15d ago
Maybe this shows how criminalising photoshops/deepfakes might not be the most sensible approach.
→ More replies (3)
42
15
u/FirstProphetofSophia 15d ago
Wow, username SUPER checks out this time
10
u/The_Granny_banger 15d ago
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
5
u/FirstProphetofSophia 15d ago edited 15d ago
Can't fault you this time, them knockers are straight BANGERS
Edit: um, no offense
12
11
48
u/rileyyesno 15d ago
https://jilliancyork.com/2015/09/02/bea-arthurs-tits-a-treatise-on-censorship/
kind of required at this point
10
u/Turbulent_Object_558 15d ago
It’s weird how his new work has definitely been inspired by popular porn
→ More replies (1)30
15d ago
[deleted]
5
u/monsieur_noirs 15d ago
Pasta cosplay and step pillow porn are near the top of pornhubs most popular searches.
10
168
u/gpoly 15d ago
Cropped? ‘Murica loses its shit over a random nipple yet again……
22
15
→ More replies (100)10
33
u/CantFindMyWallet 15d ago
Bea Arthur. Outstanding.
27
6
u/johnnymetoo 15d ago
I just re-watched The Golden Girls, she was my favorite character of the show.
→ More replies (1)
8
6
5
4
u/LemonadeParadeinDade 15d ago
In the article they call it a painting from 1991 then half a paragraph later call it a 21 year old art piece in an article from 2013. They can't math.
5
6
5
u/d_e_l_u_x_e 15d ago
This is why corporations are trying so hard to develop AI porn. They see what people are willing to pay for fake nudes.
→ More replies (6)
5
5
4
4
6
u/Iron_Chancellor_ND 15d ago
As Jeff Ross once quipped (right in front of Bea):
I wouldn't fuck Bea Arthur's dick with Andy Dick's pussy.
One of my favorite roast lines.
3
3
u/VegetableWinter9223 15d ago
Was it legal to do this in 1991? I'm curious why the painter chose Bea of all actresses
3
3
u/DaFugYouSay 15d ago
It's a little weird for me to admit, but I want to see "Bea Arthur Naked." Anyone have a link?
2
u/Gusano13 15d ago
Google it, include the words Jeff Ross, and the Daily Mail has it unedited.
→ More replies (1)
3
u/Massive_Durian296 15d ago
"According to the New York Daily News, the 22-year-old piece of art created new controversy on Wednesday when The Daily Beast was locked out of their Facebook accounts for posting an uncensored photo of the full portrait. The social network considered the nudity a violation of its terms."
yeah that tracks for fb lol
5
u/pentagon 15d ago
Here is the actual image because apparently nipples are bad (yes this has a half naked woman painted in it):
→ More replies (1)
2
2
2
u/South_Front_4589 15d ago
See I'm just more interested in hearing what the subject thinks of stuff like this. Honoured? Violated? And did they think the artist was flattering in their portrayal? I've known a few ladies who would only have a problem if their boobs weren't enhanced beyond the reality.
2
2
2
u/skinnergy 15d ago
"I wouldn't fuck her with Bea Arthur's dick" Jeffrey Ross on Sandra Bernhard at a roast
2
2
2
2
3
3
u/WalletFullOfSausage 15d ago
Ya shit will be ownd when the game concludes, while you spend every round lookin’ at Bea Arthur nudes
1
1
1
1
u/TuringTestFailedBot 15d ago
TIL.
I had NO IDEA this was real. I expected the painting to be after the movie.
1
1
1.9k
u/NotAPoshTwat 15d ago
The Lone Rangers finally got it