A woman who posed naked for British artist Lucian Freud revealed on Saturday that she was paid US$39 — and the resulting painting is expected to become the most expensive work by a living artist.
Sue Tilley said she had been delighted to be the inspiration for Benefits Supervisor Sleeping in 1995, which is set to become the most expensive painting by a living artist when it is sold in New York next month.
Art experts expect the painting of a fleshy woman reclining on a sofa to fetch up to US$33.5 million when it goes under the hammer in New York next month.
PHOTO: AP
Tilley, nicknamed Big Sue, joked she was the first nude pin-up to grace the front page of the Financial Times newspaper, which carried a photograph of the painting on Saturday.
“I can’t quite believe it, to be honest,” she told the BBC.
“Half the time I don’t really think it’s me. But then this morning I was looking at it again and I was going: ‘that’s my funny little face!’”
PHOTO: AP
Freud, the 85-year-old grandson of pioneering psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, was born in Berlin but his family fled Germany as the Nazis rose to power and he became a British citizen.
Teen idol Mischa Barton was sentenced to three years probation on Thursday after pleading no contest to drink driving charges following her arrest in December last year, court officials said.
The 22-year-old former The OC star did not appear at a brief hearing in Beverly Hills where she also received a US$2,000 fine and was ordered to attend a three-month alcohol-education class.
Drug possession charges against the actress were dismissed after Barton’s plea deal, court officials said.
Barton had been caught in possession of marijuana when she was arrested in Hollywood on Dec. 27 after police spotted her driving erratically.
“Mischa’s glad the case has been resolved,” lawyer Anthony Salerno said after the hearing, praising prosecutors in the case as “very fair.”
Though best known for hit teen television show The OC, London-born Barton’s film credits include cameos in hit movies The Sixth Sense and Notting Hill.
A lawsuit filed on Friday against a Hollywood photo agency says two of its paparazzi supplied actor Heath Ledger with cocaine so they could secretly videotape him snorting the drug in a hotel room two years ago. The suit says footage of the Ledger encounter, a portion of which aired briefly on two US television shows days after his death in January — prompting an outcry in Hollywood — was sold to media outlets around the world, some in Britain and his native Australia.
In other legal news, US pop star Madonna is expected to appear in a Malawian court in about two weeks for a final ruling on whether she can adopt a child from the southern African country, court clerks said on Friday. “Tentatively the case is expected in court on these dates — the 22nd, 23rd and 25th (of April),” said one of the clerks, who asked to remain anonymous.
Tough conditions should be attached to the adoption, a human rights group said Friday, warning unscrupulous traffickers may use the case to justify illegal adoption.
Maxwell Matewere, a spokesman for the Human Rights Consultative Committee, which attempted to legally challenge the controversial adoption, said a Malawi court should attach “tough guidelines” if it grants Madonna permanent custody.
Matewere warned Madonna’s controversial adoption of toddler David Banda could allow others to take advantage of Malawi’s lack of inter-country adoption laws.
“Others might apply to adopt and use the Madonna case to justify adoption and yet they could be illegal adoptions for trafficking, organs and sexual exploitation,” he warned.
Nona Beamer, a noted authority on Hawaiian culture and matriarch of the musical Beamer family, has died. She was 84.
Beamer, a songwriter, performer, hula teacher and author, died peacefully in her sleep early Thursday at her home on Maui, said Mark Nelson, administrator of Aloha Music Camp, which Beamer founded and operated with her son, Keola, a Grammy-nominated slack-key guitar artist.
Nelson said he and Keola Beamer were on tour, the remainder of which has been canceled. Keola Beamer and his wife have returned to Maui.
“In her own very humble, gracious and truly remarkable way, Aunty Nona was not only a pioneer … musician and humanitarian, she truly is the embodiment of aloha,’’ Nelson said.
Winona Kapuailohiamanonokalani Desha Beamer was born in Honolulu and raised in Napo’opo’o in South Kona on the Big Island. She was of Hawaiian, German, French, Scotch and Swedish ancestry. Her Hawaiian name is an ancestral name that comes from Princess Manono and means precious flower.
“It wasn’t until I was about 70 that I felt I was doing good as a Hawaiian,’’ she said in 2003. “Now I can be proud to be a Hawaiian.’’
Jan. 6 to Jan. 12 Perhaps hoping to gain the blessing of the stone-age hunter-gatherers that dwelt along the east coast 30,000 years ago, visitors to the Baxian Caves (八仙洞) during the 1970s would grab a handful of soil to bring home. In January 1969, the nation was captivated by the excavation of pre-ceramic artifacts and other traces of human habitation in several caves atop a sea cliff in Taitung County. The majority of the unearthed objects were single-faced, unpolished flake tools fashioned from natural pebbles collected by the shore. While archaeologists had found plenty of neolithic (7,000 BC to 1,700
When the weather is too cold to enjoy the white beaches and blue waters of Pingtung County’s Kenting (墾丁), it’s the perfect time to head up into the hills and enjoy a different part of the national park. In the highlands above the bustling beach resorts, a simple set of trails treats visitors to lush forest, rocky peaks, billowing grassland and a spectacular bird’s-eye view of the coast. The rolling hills beyond Hengchun Township (恆春) in Pingtung County offer a two-hour through-hike of sweeping views from the mighty peak of Dajianshih Mountain (大尖石山) to Eluanbi Lighthouse (鵝鑾鼻燈塔) on the coast, or
Her greatest fear, dormant for decades, came rushing back in an instant: had she adopted and raised a kidnapped child? Peg Reif’s daughter, adopted from South Korea in the 1980s, had sent her a link to a documentary detailing how the system that made their family was rife with fraud: documents falsified, babies switched, children snatched off the street and sent abroad. Reif wept. She was among more than 120 who contacted The Associated Press this fall, after a series of stories and a documentary made with Frontline exposed how Korea created a baby pipeline, designed to ship children abroad as quickly as
Charges have formally been brought in Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) bribery, corruption and embezzling of campaign funds cases. Ko was briefly released on bail by the Taipei District Court on Friday, but the High Court on Sunday reversed the decision. Then, the Taipei District Court on the same day granted him bail again. The ball is in dueling courts. While preparing for a “year ahead” column and reviewing a Formosa poll from last month, it’s clear that the TPP’s demographics are shifting, and there are some indications of where support for the party is heading. YOUNG, MALE
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