Is that Pope Freud?

February 16, 2016 11:12 AM

Help me identify or at least understand this rendering of what appears to be Freud with a golden mitre?

This image (located here) shows what appears to be a poster that someone has tried to remove with only little success.

Is this some sort of street art meme? Do you recognize it?

Even if you don't, is there something about the vestments or crosses that identifies a type of church official this is? Do you think this is Freud, or someone else?

In other words...is there some meaning here I am not getting?

posted by theefixedstars to Media & Arts (5 answers total)

It sure looks like street art to me, if I saw it in Paris I'd think it was a particularly nice example of something but otherwise not too surprising.

Where'd you see it? That would help narrow it down a lot. Was it ink printed on poster? The quality of detail + gold color is unusual for street art.
posted by Nelson at 11:40 AM on February 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

well, it does look like freud. he's wearing a cope and mitre (like a bishop), as far as i can tell, but the cope has no band or clasp, which is fairly unusual.
posted by andrewcooke at 11:52 AM on February 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have seen images of Freud dressed as the pope before, for instance here. I think the idea is that we no longer go to religion for absolution, but to psychology instead (e.g., "I absolve you because you had a lousy childhood"). I believe the first time I saw it was in a Terry Gilliam animation for Monty Python, but I can't find the image.
posted by ubiquity at 12:02 PM on February 16, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's a lampoon of Francis Bacon's obsessive portraits of screaming popes. I saw all of them on loan at the art museum in Milwaukee a few years ago - they're very affecting. This one has Freud's face put on it. I've seen it done with Albert Einstein before as well, in my local technical bookstore.
posted by sweltering at 6:45 PM on February 16, 2016

Interestingly, the probable source image for the face is a little ambiguous. Is it Freud, or is it Henryk Oskar Kolberg? (Probably the latter.)
posted by zamboni at 5:31 AM on February 17, 2016