Every Sarkozy picture tells a story

THE naked women and tattooed giraffes look like something from a fantasy comic strip but, with prices of up to €16,000 a canvas, something must make these pictures special.

Is it the Daliesque darkness of the religious visions? The fighting bulls like Picasso’s? More likely, it’s the story of the artist behind them: Pal Sarkozy, the 82-year-old father of France’s president, Nicolas.

“You must understand that it’s not just a naked woman or a portrait. Every picture tells a story,” Pal Sarkozy told reporters, strolling round the Espace Cardin gallery where the show opened on Saturday, a stone’s throw from his son’s offices in the Elysee palace.

He stops by “Happy Dolores”, a rear view of a shapely woman in suspenders with a wooden stump where her right leg should be.

“It’s not just for the sake of showing a girl,” he says. “It’s to illustrate her story – she was able to build a new life, even after losing a leg.”

Next to it, “Noah Help” depicts a Biblical ark perched atop a female backside and legs in black stockings. The pictures are based on drawings by Sarkozy senior, digitally coloured by his collaborator, Werner Hornung.

While the president has seen record low approval ratings in recent months, his father has drawn a mixture of interest and derision on his own account, first for publishing a memoir of his life and loves and now for his art.

“Everyone on the right-wing says it is very good. Everyone on the left says it’s very bad,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me. There are very few painters who were recognised in their lifetime.”

Among the works in the current show is a portrait of France’s first lady, the supermodel-turned-singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, playing a guitar. Pal Sarkozy gave it to the presidential couple as a marriage gift.

A portrait he painted of the president has been left out of the show, however.

“People are always talking about that picture. I want them to talk about the others,” he said. “In a way it’s a handicap having a son who is exceptional like Nicolas.”

The pictures have received scant critical attention and the artist – who separated from Nicolas Sarkozy’s mother when the future president was a child – has been accused of seeking to cash in on the family name.

Asked to give a critical appraisal of Pal Sarkozy’s paintings, Le Monde newspaper’s art critic Harry Bellet laughed out loud and refused.

“They’re very colourful, I’ll say that much,” Bellet told AFP. “I don’t think that someone who has started late like that would gain such international media coverage without some link to his son.”