Painting shows Clinton in a blue dress and red heels, lounging in Oval Office chair.
Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein allegedly featured an odd painting prominently in his Manhattan home, a portrait of former US President Bill Clinton in a blue dress and red heels.
The painting first gained public notice after a visitor to the home of Epstein took a photo of it, and that was later published in the Daily Mail. Clinton is shown reclining with his legs stretched over a chair in the Oval Office, pointing in the same style as the Uncle Sam recruitment posters.
There was speculation regarding the dress's symbolism. Some viewed it as a reference to the now-famous stained dress associated with the Monica Lewinsky affair, whereas others opined that it bore resemblance to a dress Hillary Clinton had attended the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors in.
Petrina Ryan-Kleid, an Australian-born artist who is a graduate of the New York Academy of Art, created the work of art, which is known as Parsing Bill. Ryan-Kleid indicated that the painting was sold at the school's 2012 Tribeca Ball. She said that the artwork probably went for approximately $1,300 but couldn't remember who bought it. She even had the work posted on her Saatchi Art profile.
Ryan-Kleid worked with model Christophe Nayel on the work. Nayel went on to tell Artnet News that he was on holiday when the painting erupted on social media overnight. "I was totally surprised to learn that Epstein purchased her artwork at a big event at the school," he explained. "Some of the old students even recognized my legs in that painting."
To the backlash surrounding the painting, Ryan-Kleid explained that the work was not to be interpreted literally. "I lead a private life, and I actually just had a naively recent foreigner's plan for a thesis," she said. "It was just a dumb school painting that was going to illustrate, visually, the messages that we are bombarded with about these presidents."
She added that the painting was not a commentary on gender but on political caricatures. "As I'm Australian, I wasn't then nor am I now partisan about American politics," she replied. "When I was doing it, most of what I thought was new out of the Daily Show or Australian cable television."
Elucidating the purpose behind the illustration, Ryan-Kleid emphasized that it was no joke on masculinity or cross-dressing. "The blue dress was a tribute to Lewinsky and not Clinton," she explained. "In no sense was Clinton in a blue dress intended to mock the notion of a man wearing a dress; instead, it was about opposition parties stereotyping presidents."
Finally, the artist emphasized that the painting was never intended to be read literally.
