This is the record for a sale of a living artist.
The woman who posed for the artists, Sue Tilley, has her life changed:
"Is it not a little, well, exposing to have one's magnificently generous breasts and lolling stomach revealed to the world? Tilley laughs: she was nervous, she says, about first stripping off, but quickly got used to it. Though, she adds: "I know it sounds weird, but even though there'd be no one else there I'd get dressed or put something round me just to go to the loo. I didn't want to become a regular nudist."
Of course it was a different thing for the paintings - four were produced during their four-year working relationship - to go out into the world, and to be gawped at by all and sundry. "The first painting he ever did of me [Evening in the Studio, 1993] was finished while there was a big show of his paintings on at the Whitechapel gallery," she says. "So they put it up for the last week of the exhibition. I went in there one day and there was a man giving a talk in front of the picture, saying, look at this revolting woman, she's so fat and disgusting, there's obviously something wrong with her skin. I just started laughing. The man stopped and asked if there was anything wrong. I said: 'That's me you're talking about,' and he just looked like he wanted to die. After that I didn't really mind what people said.
"I'm not the 'ideal woman', I know I'm not. But who is? And he never made the skinny ones look any better. He picks out every single little detail."" (read more
here)
Have a voluptuous weekend!
This is the record for a sale of a living artist.
The woman who posed for the artists, Sue Tilley, has her life changed:
"Is it not a little, well, exposing to have one's magnificently generous breasts and lolling stomach revealed to the world? Tilley laughs: she was nervous, she says, about first stripping off, but quickly got used to it. Though, she adds: "I know it sounds weird, but even though there'd be no one else there I'd get dressed or put something round me just to go to the loo. I didn't want to become a regular nudist."
Of course it was a different thing for the paintings - four were produced during their four-year working relationship - to go out into the world, and to be gawped at by all and sundry. "The first painting he ever did of me [Evening in the Studio, 1993] was finished while there was a big show of his paintings on at the Whitechapel gallery," she says. "So they put it up for the last week of the exhibition. I went in there one day and there was a man giving a talk in front of the picture, saying, look at this revolting woman, she's so fat and disgusting, there's obviously something wrong with her skin. I just started laughing. The man stopped and asked if there was anything wrong. I said: 'That's me you're talking about,' and he just looked like he wanted to die. After that I didn't really mind what people said.
"I'm not the 'ideal woman', I know I'm not. But who is? And he never made the skinny ones look any better. He picks out every single little detail."" (read more here)
Have a voluptuous weekend!
