Sir Les Strikes Again!

Hard on the heels of the Archibald Prize comes the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize worth $210,000 in Aussie dosh. And Sir Les Patterson strikes again! The winner is Fiona Lowry with her nude self-portrait with the pretentious title What I Assume You Shall Assume (2008). My only reason for showing this twaddle is that it strikes me as a modern variant of the Fleshy Knickers Convention of Western European art. Take a digital photo and tweak its colours until it becomes virtually monochrome and the full-frontal nude is no more than a Rorschach inkblot test. Paint or photo makes no difference. I admit it, shrink. I see a chubby naked woman in an aggressive pose with a mean look on her face. What's it mean? Am I a perve? Shrink: Calm down, Coxsoft; zis is natural Id fingy what you see. Phew!