Photo: Courtesy Geoffrey Raymond
Geoffrey Raymond, the famed portraitist of Wall Street, is working on a new painting of Ben Bernanke, and as with his some of his other paintings, he’s been encouraging Wall Streeters this week to “annotate” it — i.e., express their feelings about the Federal Reserve chairman by writing a message to him on the canvas. “Nothing too raunchy, and stay off the face,” he warned a scribbler, according to the Observer. “I know it’s tempting, man.”
“The financial community skews raunchy with its humor,” he explained to us this afternoon. “The first annotated painting I did was Rupert Murdoch, and somebody wrote ‘fuck’ right above his head, which kind of annoyed me. They also wrote some nasty stuff about Jimmy Cayne on his picture, but I let that slide. I figured they (and he) had earned it.”
So far, notable quotables include the following:
• “What have you done 4 me, Jackass!”
• “What do you pay for gas?”
• “Bring back Paul Volcker.”
• “Don’t worry, the fall to the bottom is not very far.”
• “I can’t believe I’m missing the Tour de France for this.”
The Geoffrey Raymond Show at Andes Art & Antiques [Geoffrey Raymond’s Blog]
