Minnesotan Dan Lacey is most famous for his paintings of celebrities and politicians with pancakes on their heads (or with pancake breasts, or pancake eyeglasses, or pancake anything else). But a wad of money, not a stack of pancakes, is the centerpiece of his latest work: A portrait of Mitt Romney, mostly naked and in the process of getting nakeder. The 8-by-10-inch acrylic painting, which Lacey recently completed over the course of four hours in the passenger seat of a PT Cruiser while he and his wife ran errands, is currently up for auction on eBay, where the bidding now stands at a despicably low $5.50.
Intrigued and a little bit confused by this masterpiece, we asked Lacey for some more insight. In an email, he wrote:
The Mitt Romney nude is more an expression of personal artistic issues than any sort of political statement. Lately I’ve been keeping a number of self-nudes up for auction on Ebay, and they’ve been doing well but my family is hesitant. The pivot point of respectability seems to be the penis. During the past month I decided to go pro-penis and the response from collectors has been positive.
So the Romney is basically a self-portrait. I’m nearly an ex-Christian but have some personal faith remaining but expect nothing — Mitt is certainly coming from a unique place on that issue as well. From a purely self-promotional standpoint he needs to reveal himself to become more likeable, but how does he do that without offending? He’s been blessed by God but others cannot be unless they accept.
Do we totally understand what that means? Not remotely. But such is art.
As for that roll of money — which, lest there be any confusion, is Romney’s penis, as opposed to being wrapped around it — Lacey tells us, “His male identity and tool of procreation is a financially based instrument.”
