UK: Blair depicted naked amid his bloody Iraq legacy

Xinhuanet reports:

Blair depicted as naked at art exhibition

BEIJING, June 7 — In a painting entitled “Iraq Triptych,” Tony Blair was depicted as a naked, stony-faced person and surrounded by haunting images of the war in Iraq, according to European media’s reports.

The painting, a charcoal work measuring 4.5 meters by 1.5 meters by Michael Sandle, was unveiled Wednesday at the Royal Academy of Art’s annual Summer Exhibition.

It has won the top Hugh Casson prize for drawing.

This painting depicts Blair and his wife, Cherie, as Adam and Eve, struggling to cover their nude forms outside their Downing Street home.

Behind them the figures are flanked by piles of bones, body parts and skulls.

“This is a biblical allegory — Adam and Eve expelled from paradise — and this is Blair’s legacy,” Sandle said, calling the Iraq war “disgraceful.”

The artist accused Blair of “vanity” for supporting the United States in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and said Britain had a habit of “interfering overseas.”

“He doesn’t appear to feel a twinge of conscience about Iraq because he is so sure that he did the right thing,” Sandle said.

“They have talked about the original perpetrators of violence being the ones who should apologize, but what about the 650,000 Iraqis who have died since the invasion?

“Who is going to apologize to them, and how?”

Blair is stepping down as prime minister on June 27 and will be succeeded by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.

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