Impeached South Korean president Park Geun-Hye’s nude painting met a violent end at the country’s parliament Tuesday. Supporters tore the work — which evokes Edouard Manet’s Olympia — off the wall and destroyed it.
The image was part of an exhibition at the National Assembly featuring works by 22 artists lampooning Park and her confidante Choi Soon-Sil, who is at the centre of the corruption scandal that led to Park’s impeachment.
In Manet’s 19th-century original, on display in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, a naked white woman widely identified as a prostitute stares boldly out at the viewer while a black servant brings her flowers.
In Lee Koo-Young’s version, entitled “Dirty Sleep”, Park’s features are transposed onto a nude Asian woman who clasps a missile from the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system to her bosom.
Park last year agreed with the US government to deploy the system in South Korea in response to the threat of missiles from the nuclear-armed North, infuriating China.
She is also depicted dozing as the Sewol ferry — which went down with the loss of nearly 400 lives three years ago — sinks outside her window.
Two puppies cavort on her thighs and Choi takes the place of the servant.
A group of some 20 Park supporters went on a rampage at the exhibition, wrecking the work. A 63-year-old member of a rightist group was arrested and another was being sought by police, it said.
On its website the Musee d’Orsay describes Manet’s painting as a “profanation of the idealised nude”, adding that it “provoked a violent reaction”.
