Art History
I am a sucker for an Austrian painter. Not all, though; I’m not a sucker for Adolf Hitler, or anything, that would be taking it too far. Anyway, apparently he was rubbish. That’s why he got into dictating.
My favourite artist is Egon Schiele. I like the way the people he paints look tired, cold, emaciated and knackered.
The painting above, The Embrace, is my favourite of all of his work and I have a 1.5 metre wide version of this framed in my bedroom. If only it were the real thing. Maybe whichever banker has it hanging in his toilet will now be so skint as to want to sell it for a song.
Over the years the painting has caused quite a stir. Not least in my house.
“What’s the deal with the nudey picture?” a few visitors have remarked, particularly when it was on more public display in the living room of my former residence, The Flat of the Flying Martinis.
When my gran visited my flat for the first time, she was clearly unhappy that I was living “over the brush” with Meeester, at that time, my “bidey-in” instead of my husband. Still visibly stiff from being shown round my tiny flat and seeing the double bed instead of the bunk beds that would have suggested a degree of decorum, she spotted the painting. She stiffened further. So I decided to make things worse and told her it was a portrait of me and Meeester that a friend had done. For a laugh. Within seconds, I realised that she actually believed me and had to tell her the truth to stop her from imploding.
Today, a young art critic in the shape of my daughter’s five year old friend is in the Master Bedroom of the House of the Flying Martinis, getting her trousers changed after an unfortunate incident involving a misjudged skid in a muddy playpark.
“Why is there a picture of naked people having a cuddle in here?”
“I like it. Do you not?”
“No, it’s disgusting”
“Ahh, it’s not. Why?”
“It is because of the willy and the fandango”
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