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Lucien Freud's painting of Sue Tilley, called "Benefits Supervisor Sleeping," has sold for £17.2 million — reportedly the highest payday for a living artist in history. For Kira Cochrane at the Guardian, the portrait brings up a bunch of issues about the relationship of artist to subject, specifically when the artist is male and the "muse" is female. Cochrane references radical feminist artists the Guerilla Girls, who asked on a poster in 1989, "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?" and found that 85% of the nudes at the Met were women, while only 5% of artists represented in the museum were women. It's one thing to discuss the power dynamics between an artist and a muse with whom he is sexually or romantically involved, but what about women who act merely as models, like Tilley? What are the power dynamics implicit in that relationship? More »
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