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Kaya unveils "Erdogan, the Turkish Sun King"

Inspired by the astonishing tirade of public threats made last week by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan against critics and political opponents who are attempting to expose Erdoğan, members of his family and his close circle of friends as criminally corrupt in the lead-up to last month's local elections in which the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) somewhat suspiciously won 45 percent of the national vote, Kaya Mar has produced a new artwork of the ever-emboldened Prime Minister, titled "Erdoğan, the Turkish Sun King".

Referencing Hyacinthe Rigaud's famous painting "Louis XIV King of France", Kaya's painting portrays Erdoğan posing flamboyantly, standing on top of a book of law. One hand is resting on his hip and is stained with the blood of the many protesters who have been killled by Turkish police and Turkish Security Service (MIT) officers since widespread unrest began in 2013. His other arm is draped across a huge pile of bags containing the millions of euros which Erdoğan is accused of obtaining through 'graft', extortion and construction contract fixing.

Behind him on the right is a huge pile of shoe boxes, alluding to the discovery by police in the Istanbul home of Erdoğan ally and Halk Bank CEO Suleyman Aslan of shoe boxes stuffed with over $4.5 million cash.

Kaya's Erdoğan wears a cassette tape on a chain around his neck, referring to the four shocking telephone intercepts leaked on YouTube and Twitter of Erdoğan warning one of his sons Bilal Erdoğan of imminent police raids on other cabinet ministers' residences, and instructing his son to urgently  "nullify" 30 million euros which is in one of Erdoğan's various houses. His son is told to entrust the money to several businessmen for safekeeping, and make sure that none is left in the house. The phone calls all date from  December 17th, the same day that the Turkish police arrested two government ministers and the sons of three cabinet members for corruption, bribery, and tender-rigging. [Read the full transcript here]

Interestingly, Erdoğan has not denied that it is him on the recordings. Admitting that his phone was probably tapped and the conversation was of him and his son, Erdoğan claims, however, that the recordings have been manipulated by his enemies to make an "immoral montage", though expert technical analysis reports that the recordings are "probably real", and if they have been manipulated it is by means and techniques not currently known. [Read here]

Another leaked recording between Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Head of Turkish Intelligence Hakan Fidan during which the two men discuss Erdoğan's thoughts that an attack on Syria "must be seen as an opportunity for us [Turkey]". Clearly planning with each other to create a false flag attack on Turkey to justify Erdoğan going to war with neighbour Syrias, Fidan then says that he will send four Syrian rebels to attack Turkey to "make up a cause of war".  [Read the full transcript here]

Fearing that the police investigation was about to focus on him and his close circle, Prime Minister Erdoğan retaliated by wildly blaming his persecution on foreign ambassadors (especially of the USA and Israel) and his arch-rival, self-exiled Imam Fethullah Gülen (whose religious movement had supported the AKP's rise to power in 2002) took the extraordinary step of on 7th January of issuing a government decree which stopped 450 police officers from the Financial Crimes department from entering the Istanbul Security Department HQ, including the chiefs of the units dealing with financial crimes, smuggling and organised crime. Most notable amongst this purge was Hüseyin Çapkın, the Chief of Police in Istanbul.

The posting of these damning audio recordings and the huge public outcry and consequent street protests resulted in Erdoğan shutting down both YouTube and Twitter in Turkey on March 20th to prevent the public either hearing the tapes or discussing the contents - a move which has earned him international condemnation and raised concerns about democracy and freedom of speech in Turkey.

In Kaya's painting the blue and blood-spattered corpse of the Twitter bird logo hangs off the shoe boxes.

YouTube and Twitter have been restored in Turkey following a Supreme Court ruling under constitutional law, but Erdoğan has since given his government sweeping new powers to censor and monitor the internet in Turkey in future, which will have a chilling effect on political dissent in the future.

It seems, though, that no matter what Prime Minister Erdoğan tries to do to silence his critics or censor the public opinion, his aspirations of becoming the Neo-Ottoman Sultan of Turkey look to be in grave peril: US investigative journalist Seymour Hirsch, who in 1969 exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and in 2004 exposed US mistreatment and torture of Guantanamo Bay detainees, has published a piece in the London Review of Books which asserts that the Sarin gas attack in a suburb of Damascus was a collusion between Recep Erdoğan and Syrian rebel group the al-Nusra Front, ten of whom were arrested in Southern Turkey last May with two kilograms of Sarin. [Read Seymour Hirsch's article here]

Further adding to Erdogan's obvious panic over the mounting accusations of rampant political corruption, war-mongering and the open threats made against his critics, there are now calls for Turkey's EU accession to be halted from Germany's CSU party (sister party of Angela Merckel's CDU). General Secretary Andreas Scheuer said earlier this week that "slowly it is becoming evident that Erdogan's Turkey does not belong in Europe".

For the moment it looks like Prime Minister Erdoğan will keep an ever-tightening grip on his power and position. Widely supported in the highly conservative  rural districts by devoted members of his ruling Islamist party whose supporters (regardless of how much damning proof is put in front of them) seem content to blindly ignore the massive corruption of Erdoğan, his family and his cronies. He is getting rid of anyone in the civil service or the judiciary who might be a threat to him and, like King Louis XIV, the Sun King (who famously said  "L'État, c'est moi"  - "I am the state"), Erdogan clearly places himself above the law.

 

Needed for now by NATO and the USA for strategic airbases in the region from which they can continue to harrass and attack nearby dissenting Islamic countries who resist the American Empire, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan knows he holds some trump cards, but, if the link between his government and the deadly Sarin gas attack on Ghouta which was intended to push President Obama over his famous "Red Line" into launching a massive aerial bombardment of Syria (but which failed after British scientists from Porton Down discvovered that the Sarin was different from the Sarin gas held by the Assad regime) continues to be investigated and exposed across the world - despite the usual blanket denial by the US State Department of any knowledge of this war crime by one of their regional allies and a complete refutation of all of Pullitzer Prize-winning Seymour Hirsch's investigative reporting (in fact the expected backlash against Hirsch has already started) - then maybe the CIA will quietly decide to throw Erdoğan to the wolves by way of a well-funded "Colour Revolution"...

"Erdoğan, the Turkish Sun King" © Kaya Mar

The sabres are rattling in Ukraine...

Click image to view article

As the entire planet seemingly rushes to take outspoken (and often deeply contradictory) moral positions on the rapidly evolving geopolitical Ukrainian hurricane which was seeded in Kiev by a ragtag (but fiercely determined) mob of pro-European, anti-Russian protesters,  and saw the ousting of corrupt hard-man President Viktor Yanukovych last week, the airwaves have been awash with various world leaders apparently competing to see who can cram the most ironic hypocrisy into a teleprompted speech to their home audiences.

Yanukovych's hurried nightime flight out of the capital by private jet - leaving behind his astonishing gold-plated presidential "villa" - created a sudden power-vacuum which seems to be filling up with an alarming mixture of mild-mannered liberal intelectuals who openly want Ukraine to seek EU membership and be protected by NATO as they eat panini and read Proust outside pavement cafes on the one hand, and also by neo-nazi extremist ultra-nationalists on the other hand who have made it very plain that they want a Ukraine which is "A pure Ukraine and free from Russians and Jews", which, bearing in mind that during World War II around 80,000 Western Ukranians happily collaborated with the Nazis and joined the Waffen SS and went on to commit horrendous atrocities against Jews and Russians, has alarmed the millions of ethnic Russian Ukrainians living in the East of the country, especially on the Crimean Peninsula which is currently home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and which is witnessing sabre-rattling and fiery rhetoric from all sides of the argument that looks set to either get completely out of control and launch a massive conflagration across Eastern Europe, or to fizzle out once everyone has had a good shout...

 

Kaya's new painting "Obama & Putin: The Red Line" portrays US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin confronting each other over the recent dramatic events in the Ukraine, separated by the thick red line which each tells the other not to cross.

Alex Salmond - The Scottish Pope...

Click on photo to view in the Politics Gallery

As a personal reflection on the increasingly bad-tempered rhetoric flying backwards and forwards between Westminster and Holyrood House, Kaya has produced a new work featuring Scottish First Minister - and evangelical proponent of Scottish Independence - Alex Salmond.

Titled "Alex Salmond - The Pope of Scotland", the Scottish National Party leader is portrayed dressed only in a Scottish Saltire flag wrapped around his waist. Around his neck he optimistically sports a large gold coin bearing the  Queen's head, representing his recently-dashed presumption that an independent Scotland could still use the British pound. In his hand Salmond clutches what looks like a Papal Crook which has a petrol pump nozzle on the top, symbolic of Salmond's only economic trump card on which he intends and independent Scotland to finance itself - the dwindling reserves of North Sea gas and oil. On one foot he wears a solitary boot to represent his "we want to be half-in, half-out" policies.

 

CLICK HERE to view painting in the Politics Gallery

David Cameron - Not waving, but drowning as the floodwaters expose his incompetence

Click on photo to view in our Politics Gallery

Kaya's latest painting of David Cameron portrays the Prime Minister panicking and floundering, up to his chin in the catastrophic Winter floodwaters which submerged and subsumed huge swathes of predominantly Tory-voting Southern and South-Western England in enormous lakes of backed-up sewage, and in so doing graphically exposed the true effects of the Cameron government's ideological budget-slashing austerity policy which had dramatically called a virtual halt to all the embattled Environmental Agency's planned flood defense repair programmes, making this disaster inevitable.

Also exposed was the hypocrisy of Cameron's claims that the UK is broke and cannot afford to spend money on social welfare or national infrastructure. Several weeks after the flooding began it was only the sparsely populated Somerset Levels which were affected, but suddenly the trouble finally reached the affluent, influential stockbroker belt along the River Thames, causing Fat Dave to scuttle into the rising waters wearing his new wellies, a flourescent tabard and his best "Gosh, I'm sincere" expression, and to declare that "Money is no object" when it came to protecting his most rabid core-voters...

 

CLICK HERE to view the painting in the Politics Gallery.

Kaya portrays Pope Francis, leading a badly damaged church

Painted days before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child released its scathing report criticising the Vatican and calling for the Catholic Church to open up its records for inspection, Kaya's painting entitled "Pope Francis leading a damaged church" portrays the new pope sitting astride a three-legged donkey, representing the severe damage done to the Catholic Church's reputation by a succession of child abuse scandals going back decade (if not much further) and accusations of money laundering and Mafia involvement in the Vatican Bank.

 

The Pope holds in his arms a white and a black sheep which symbolises the worldwide racial inclusivity of the church, and the question remains: Can this humble man win the battle of self-serving interests within the Holy See and repair the huge damage done to his church by decades of scandal and cover-up?

 

CLICK HERE to view the painting in the Politics Gallery

China & Japan's deadly tug of war in the South China Seas

Click on photo and view the Politics Gallery

The recent rapid deterioration in Sino-Japanese relations over sovereign rights of the fiercely-contested Senaku Islands took an alarming leap even further backwards last week after the claim by Commander of the US Pacific Fleet Captain James Fanell that the Chinese military have been training for "a short, sharp war to destroy Japanese forces in the East China Sea, followed by what can only be expected as the seizure of the Senkaku Islands".

Ownership of the uninhabitable archipelago - known in China as the Diaoyo Islands - has been hotly disputed by the Chinese government since 1971, and even though the Chinese claim it is a matter of the protection of maritime rights, many in the region say it is about the creeping seizure of coastal rights and the conferred right to oil exploration in the region.

The dispute undoubtedly serves the political needs of both Beijing amd Tokyo as both countries have reasons for prolonging the nationalistic tensions, which play well with their respective home crowds, showing that each is taking a tough stance against their historical enemies. In Beijing, President Xi Jinping is looking to divert the public gaze from the country's growing economic woes and internal demands for higher wages and greater freedom. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe considers the impressive rise of the Chinese economy worldwide as a long-term threat to Japanes standing and influence in the region - exacerbated too by economic problems.

Though this kind of brinkmanship has been seen over and over again in global political history, there is always a distinct danger that the situation will suddenly and unpredictably spiral out of hand, igniting a lethal tit-for-tat conflagration from which neither of these overtly-proud nations would be willing to back from.

Kaya Mar's painting, titled "China and Japan - A Deadly Tug of War" portrays Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped in their national flags, both ankle deep in the East China Sea, wrestling fiercely for control of a large black bomb, out of which sticks a burning fuse.

CLICK HERE to view the painting in our Politics Gallery.

New work: François Hollande's embarassing personal injury...

Kaya stands beside his new work entitled "Hollande's Embarassing Injury" which portrays the French President trying to strike a dignified Napoleonic pose whilst nursing an embarassing self-inflicted injury in a Tricoleur sling.

 

Recently scandalised by a French gossip magazine 'Closer' who revealed that the already beleagured President of France has been sneaking out of the Elysee Palace on a moped to hold secret trysts with actress Julie Gayet, it has now been discovered that the actress had been installed in a nearby apartment, and her affair with the most powerful politician in France had been going on for two years.

News of the affair came as a traumatic shock to Hollande's current long-term partner (and official First Lady) journalist Valerie Trierweiler, who promptly had an attack of the vapours and was admitted to hospital in Paris for ten days 'rest'.

Some political observers have remarked that the timing of Hollande's outing and the subsequent media frenzy is extremely convenient for former French President Nicholas Sarkozy who is planning his political comeback...

New work: Boris Johnson's big IQ test

Following London Mayor Boris Johnson's controversial public statement that "16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85", Kaya Mar has portrayed Johnson in this new artwork as a smirking Silverback gorilla sitting in a large 'IQ' zoo swing, clutching a corn cob.

Speaking last November at the annual Margaret Thatcher Lecture at the Conservative Centre for Policy Studies, Johnson gave a speech defending greed, envy and inequality, in which he said: "Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per cent have an IQ above 130. The harder you shake the pack, the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top."

Johnson's labelling of 16 percent of all people as mentally subnormal and likening them as 'cornflakes' above which the rich and powerful would naturally rise above, caused a predictable media storm of outrage, which suits the attention-seeking Johnson and his shadowy City of London supporters who want very much to see Johnson in occupation at No.10 Downing Street.

New work: Cameron, Clegg & Miliband gleefully decapitating the Free Press

Kaya's new work "Decapitating the Free Press" portrays David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband joyfully conspiring to silence the free press in the UK by way of statutory implementation of recommendations made by Lord Justice Leveson in 2013 following his lengthy inquiry into press misconduct. Though many people in the UK (especially minor TV stars who have been caught with their pants down) are jumping up and down in glee, the dark side of the coin is that the future of investigative journalism which holds the powerful and the wealthy to proper public account is looking very unsure. All those sleazy Westminster politicians who were caught red-handed, en masse, with their sticky, corrupt fingers in the public purse when the Telegraph did their amazing investigations into the MP's expenses scandal would likely never have been exposed under the new regime which is to be forced on the press, and since there are still so many unanswered questions about Prime Minister David Cameron's sleazy relationship with Rupert Murdoch, Rebekkah Brooks and Andy Coulson, one would be forgiven for thinking that Cameron has the most to gain by silencing the British press.

As the world eulogises on the death of Nelson Mandela, Kaya portrays "The Death of the Rainbow Nation"

Kaya Mar presents "The Death of the Rainbow Nation"

The past few weeks have seen a media feeding frenzy of truly epic proportions as the world mourned the final passing of the father of modern post-apartheid South Africa, Nelson Mandela, and you would have to have spent several weeks trapped in an air pocket in a sunken freighter at the bottom of the Indian Ocean to have missed the often nauseating spectacle of world leaders queuing up with quivering bottom lips and moist handkerchiefs to deliver their 'heart-felt' audience-friendly personal gushing eulogies to the great man - including our own Prime Minister David Cameron who, as member of the Federation of Conservative Students in the 1980's, allegedly supported their strident calls for Nelson Mandela to be hanged as a terrorist.

At the appropriate moment hundreds of presidents, prime ministers, heads of state and bloody Bono descended from the skies to attend the self-serving circus that was Mandela's memorial service - complete with THAT infamous 'Selfie' incident as Cameron, Obama and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt giggled and laughed and took souvenir photos of themselves.

The international travelling circus soon departed, their PR missions accomplished, leaving the people of South Africa to work out what the hell they're supposed to do next now that the man who prevented revenge and retribution being meted out as the old colonial apartheid  collapsed under the onslaught of worldwide criticism and economic sanctions had finally died, leaving behind a huge political vaccuum in what has for years been known as the 'Rainbow Nation'.

With Mandela's adroit leadership South Africa remained open for business as usual for Western business interests and the wealthy Afrikaaners who stayed behind, but for the poor black South Africans the future bore no resemblance whatsoever to the promises of employment, housing and economic growth made by Mandela and the ruling African National Congress (ANC) as they took power.

Kaya Mar's painting "Death of the Rainbow Nation" portrays Nelson Mandela's coffin - complete with rainbow - being carried by two pall bearers. At the front strides a wealthy, very well fed Western businessman, but behind him a black South African - impoverished and weak with hunger - struggles under the weight of the coffin. Around the man's ankle we see the chains of slavery and apartheid have been broken, but significantly those chains are still weighing the African down.

"Death of the Rainbow Nation" by Kaya Mar

George Osborne delivers another empty Autumn Budget

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne delivered his 2013 Autumn Budget to the House of Comons on December 5th, and although he took the opportunity to claim that everything was going marvellously to plan and Great Britain was emerging like a Phoenix from the flames of austerity, he delivered nothing of any substance whatsoever for the ordinary citizen, beyond promising all of us who aren't bankers or self-satisfied hereditary millionaires many more years of austerity and pain, followed by the prospect of being expected to die of old age in your miserable minimum-wage job because you now won't be allowed to retire and claim your completely inadequate state pension until you're 108 years old (well... almost...)

In Kaya Mar's new painting of George Osborne delivering his Autumn budget, we see the smug Chancellor proudly waving the traditional red Budget Box which has fallen open and is actually empty. In his other hand the smirking ex-Bullingdon boy holds a burning branch, representing the Conservatives' Marie Antoinette-like attitude towards the poor who are experiencing extreme fuel poverty this Winter. Instead of eating cake, Osborne encourages the poor to burn their own furniture or gather fallen branches in their nearest woods.

 

Finally, we see Osborne is definitely not out of the deep water yet, and on his raised foot he wears a Conservative Party-coloured 'Austerity' sock, full of holes.

George Osborne's 2013 Autumn Budget - Empty gestures and more Austerity...

Kaya joins 50,000 anti-NHS cuts protesters in Manchester as the Conservative Party Conference opens.

David Cameron drives the train to Manchester...

As the 2013 Conservative Party Conference opened at the Manchester Conference Complex on Sept 29th, Kaya joined over 50,000 trade union members and anti-austerity cuts protesters as they marched through the streets of Manchester calling for a halt to the evisceration of the NHS at Tory hands.

As always, protesters and passers-by of all political colours were intrigued and amused by Kaya's two large political paintings - "Cameron and Clegg Crucifying the NHS as the Vultures Gather" and "David Cameron Losing Control of the Coalition".

Enjoy our slideshow of the day - best viewed in full screen Hi-res, naturally...

Kaya takes Ed Miliband and Ed Balls to the seaside

What better excuse could there be for a trip to the seaside than the opening of the 2013 Labour Party Conference?

 

Despite the gloomy weather, and armed only with two large canvases of Labour Party leader Ed Miliband and his extremely ambitious shadow chancellor Ed Balls, Kaya jumped on the Brighton train to spend the day - alongside various campaign groups hoping the party leadership would address their problems - bringing a mixture of smiles, grins, guffaws and frowns to conference delegates, party workers and politicians as they arrived at the Brighton Conference Centre.

 

The day was a great success with the usual interest paid in Kaya's paintings, and served as a great warm-up for next weekend's charabanc outing to Manchester where Kaya is going to debut his brand new painting of David Cameron - stumbling out of the wreckage of the Coalition - as this year's Conservative Party Conference opens.

 

Enjoy our slideshow below.

New artworks in our Politics Gallery section:

It's certainly been a busy month for Kaya Mar, who has produced several new political canvases. On the subject of the resurgence of political unrest in Turkey, Kaya's latest work which you'll find in the Politics Gallery is titled "Erdogan, the Ottoman Sultan rides to war", and portrays Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan astride a donkey, waving a tattered Ottoman Empire flag as he is led towards Syrian intervention by his equally bullish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu.

'Erdogan the Ottoman Sultan rides to war' by Kaya Mar

Kaya joins Stop the War Coalition's "Hands Off Syria" protest

As Western governments roll out their usual deceptions, half-truths, outright lies, falsified intelligence and wall-to-wall media propaganda to justify their planned military attack and regime change in Syria, Stop the War Coalition held a protest march and rally to demand there be no Western intervention in the Syrian conflict. Kaya joined the protest on the day, taking with him his 'Obama, enslaved by war' and 'Miliband's Manifesto'

Kaya amongst the crowd on Trafalgar Square

Ed Miliband reveals his election manifesto

Kaya puts the finishing touches on his new painting "Ed Miliband reveals his election manifesto"
That Labour Party election manifesto in full...

German Chancellor Angela Merckel cultivates her image as she prepares to run for office for a third term.

Kaya makes sure everything in Angela Merckel's garden of austerity is blooming.
"Angela Merckel cultivates her image for a third term" by Kaya Mar

"Margaret Thatcher's funeral - Rich and Poor pulling in opposite directions"

Kaya's artwork marking the national split in opinion over the over-blown funeral of the late Margaret Thatcher.

Dutch news programme "Een Vandaag" interviewed Kaya as the world waited for the royal baby

As the excitement amongst the world's media for news on the royal baby's progress mounted with the temperature during London's heatwave, several TV stations went looking for alternative views on the entire Royalist spectacle, leading them - quite naturally - to Kaya and his controversial political painting of the Duchess of Cambridge.

Dutch news programme 'Een Vandaag' travelled to Kaya's home in West London and interviewed him for their news report on the media circus, which you can watch  below: 

sitestat

Czech TV news programme 'Studio 6' interviews Kaya outside St Mary's Hospital

Click on image to watch the 'Studio 6' report at 3m 05s

Czechoslovakian news programme 'Studio 6' also interviewed Kaya outside the Lindo Wing of St. Mary's Hospital in London's Paddington district. CLICK HERE to see the news report on the Ceskatelevize.cz website.

Kaya's painting of the Duchess of Cambridge is a hit with the media...

Saint Kate causes a stir on the internets...

As the salivating media machine which has amassed outside St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, gets ready to drown the entire planet in a titanic tsunami of royal baby pictures, articles, books, posters, tee-shirts, unvelievably awful ceramic plates and god knows what else that can be monetised and flogged on Romford Market, Kaya has had his biggest media reaction yet with his metaphor-laden painting of a post-natal Duchess of Cambridge, as previously mentioned below.

 It really has been a "Marmite" moment, as publications, websites and blogs have divided into "Love it" or "Hate it" camps. We've posting a slideshow below this article  showing a small sample of Kaya's diverse press over the last month...

Kaya's response to the NSA global surveillance scandal: "Obama - The Listening President"

"Obama - The Listening President"

As his reaction to the recent revelations leaked by former CIA/NSA analyst Edward Snowden that the National Security Agency (NSA), in collaboration with the CIA, has not only been unconstitutionally spying on the entire population of the USA and been blatantly lying to Congress about it, but has also been eavesdropping on the electronic communications of the entire planet with its PRISM program, Kaya has produced a new artwork titled "Obama - The Listening President".

 

Obama is portrayed kneeling on the floor in an almost beatific manner whilst wearing large headphones through which he is intently and secretively listening in on phone calls and internet communications from the pile of laptops and phones on the floor. The thick bundle of gleaming data cables from all this equipment disappears up into the dark, unpleasant back passage of a whistful Democratic Party donkey which is blindfolded with the Stars and Stripes flag, and cannot (or refuses to) see what is going on at its other end.

Kaya stirs a hornet's nest with his metaphor-laden painting of a post-natal Duchess of Cambridge

Kaya with his painting of the Duchess of Cambridge.

As the world's press gathers outside St. Mary's Hospital in Paddington, desperate for those hugely lucrative first pictures of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge posing on the hospital steps brandishing the newborn heir to the throne, Kaya Mar has already courted controversy with his metaphor-laden political painting of the post-natal Duchess - her head surrounded by a halo as a golden child wearing its golden crown suckles on her breast. On her exposed, bloodied leg she wears a holey red sock - a reference to both her roots as a 'commoner' and to the age of austerity into which the child is being born into (though will never, ever experience). Peering out from under the Duchess' birth robe is the Queen's corgi - a perpetual reminder of the powerful family business for whom she has become yet another obedient servant.

 

First released by the world's press in early June, the painting attracted a deluge of vitriol and insults from many of the global news sites and publications which used the picture, and from the public - none more vitriolic than Mumsnet rival web community Parentdish.co.uk, where, amongst the tirade of insults, one user even wished Kaya were dead!

 

The controversy grew so much that the editors of 'Shine Yahoo!' lifestyle website interviewed Kaya to find out what was in his mind when he created the painting.

 

Later on today we'll post links to the Parentdish and Shine Yahoo! items, and a full list of the hundreds of web articles featuring Kaya and his Kate Middleton painting will be placed in our 'PRESS' section, but in the meanwhile we just can't resist sharing with you our favourites from Parentdish:

 

ROGER AND PIP

When are the media going to STOP calling her Kate Middleton??? and this picture is horrible, I cannot think what the Queen thinks of this monstrosity. It looks something that a young child would paint, absolutely no talent.


jean

this is not art its just crap

 

think_before_you_write

Certainly gaoled and given felt tips and newspapers to colour in , what a dic8head.

 

rbrb666

I would really like to see a painting by this artist when he's not on the piss....

 

James.renwick

IT REALLY IS A TRULY MAGNIFICENT INSPIRED WORK OF ART!,AND A MOST EXCELLENT AND WONDEROUS PORTRAYAL OF KATE MIDDLETON!!!!.

One has to understand and apreciate 'Art' to interperate and understand what the artist is saying when he paints a picture of their subject!.

And Mr Kaya Mar has cptured and interperated Kate Middleton perfectly in this painting!.

I hope that it will be placed on display at the Tate Gallery very soon, as I would like to spend several hours just in veiwing it!

James

 

neesargon

How odd. Peculiar skinny legs.... and why a corgi? Kate and Wills don't have corgis.

 

penmon198

what a load of sh**e!

 

Sadly, Parentdish must have panicked slightly and have massively culled the comments, leaving only 35, but that's OK, because we screengrabbed most of them weeks ago, including the wish that Kaya would die...

Kaya's G8 painting hits the spot

Kaya with his G8 painting

They came by luxury jet and blacked-out bullet-proof limousines, closely escorted by armed police and army special forces as they were whisked at high speed straight to the secluded Lough Erne Golf Resort just outside Enniskillen in Co Fermanagh - far from the mobs of unwashed malcontents with their huge lists of grievances - where they drunk the finest champagne and devoured haute-cuisine at our expense.

Yes, it was yet another G8 Summit and a hugely successful one at that (if by successful you mean that absolutely nothing was changed), according to their own press officers. Pampered brows were appropriately furrowed and manicured hands were wrung en masse over austerity, corporate tax avoidance, government transparency and global trade, but the only concrete thing to come out of the 39th G8 Summit was the date of the NEXT G8 Summit...

 

To celebrate this great event, Kaya Mar produced this large canvas portraying the G8 leaders on the left, leaders of the developing nations on the right, with both sides pointing bloodsoaked accusatory fingers at each other as the World drowns in war, revolution, inequality and poverty.

 

Visit our 'Press' section for a look at the media's take on Kaya's painting.

"G8 - Pointing the finger of blame as the world drowns in blood"

Top Row, left to right: Barack Obama (USA), Angela Merckel (Germany), Shinzō Abe (Japan), François Hollande (France), Manmohan Singh (India), Dilma Rousseff (Brazil), Li Keqiang (China)

Bottom row, left to right: David Cameron (UK), Vladimir Putin (Russia), Stephen Harper (Canada), Enrico Letta (Italy), Jacob Zuma (South Africa), Enrique Peña Nieto (Mexico)

Sample of press articles featuring "Divided Nation" - Kaya Mar's painting of the death of Margaret Thatcher.

Links to the original articles can be found in our "Press & Media" section. CLICK HERE.

Kaya Mar's painting of Francois Hollande riding David Cameron through the Mali desert is reinterpreted by the press!

It's weird how things turn out sometimes - Kaya was snapped by a passing photographer near Parliament one gloomy day several weeks ago with his painting of Hollande and Cameron galloping through the Mali desert, but newspaper and news website editors took one look at the combination of French President Hollande on the back of British Prime Minister David Cameron as a horse, and unanimously decided that the painting was perfect for editorials about French horsemeat!

 

Who are we to argue...? The count of news sites and blogs associatng Kaya's painting with dodgy French meat processors stands at around 80!

Budget Day coverage of Kaya

Kaya's new painting of George Osborne was a great success amongst the press and media who had descended on Westminster on Budget Day. Kaya spent time around Downing Street, then joined the striking PCS Union members who held a noisy rally right outside Parliament as a large video wall relayed live camera feeds from the floor of the House of Commons as Osborne announced his budget - to loud choruses of insults and catcalls from the protesters gathered on Old College Yard.

 

Enjoy our compilation slideshow below, showing Kaya at the rally and some of the media and social networking mentions he got with "George Osborne - Running Round In Circles"...

Kaya announces his own Budget analysis at the Treasury.

Chancellor George Osborne going round in circles at the Treasury

We just can't believe it's Budget Time again already, and the excitement is making us feel giddy! Why... it seems like only yesterday that Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne stood up in Parliament wearing nothing but his Bullingdon Club Perma-Smirk to announce his latest round of punitive government spending cuts which only seem to hurt the poor and the weak amongst us, because (of course) it was the poor, the disabled and the dying who were responsible for the banks being unconditionally handed hundreds of billions of pounds to recapitalise themselves after they collectively drove the World economy off a cliff though sheer greed, right?

 

Anyway... though the deep wounds inflicted on Joe Public in the Autumn Budget are still red raw, today we're going to be battered by yet another round of blood-letting at the hands of Osborne who, far from fixing the UK economy seems to be making things worse despite all the spin and deception, an,d to cheer us up before the axe falls Kaya Mar has unveiled his latest side-swipe at George Osborne with his new political painting "George Osborne - Running Round in Circles" which portrays Osborne naked (as always), sinking deeper and deeper into the ground because of the very deep ruts he's made by inanely running round and round and round in obsessive ideological circles for over two years.

 

In his hand the Chancellor waves a large 'Austerity' Red Herring, and around his neck he wears a huge golden (but clearly downgraded) 'Triple-A' medallion. In the background we see the burning, sinking wreckage of UK manufacturing and industry, unable to get essential business loans to grow their businesses because the banks, though absolutely awash with hundreds (if not thousands) of billions in cash courtesy of the UK taxpayer, they're hoarding the loot.

 

Kaya will be banging on the gates of Downing Street first thing in the morning as he hopes to give George Osborne an eyeful of satire. We'll be posting photos from Kaya's Budget Day adventure this evening. Stay tuned!

As the Italian elections panic the financial markets, Kaya Mar brings his Berlusconi to the Italian Embassy.

Kaya brings Silvio Berlusconi to the Italian Embassy.

Following last week's shock Italian elections and the shockwave it sent through the world markets, Kaya Mar showed his large oil-on-canvas satirical painting of Italy's scandal-ridden ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi outside the Italian embassy in London on February 27, 2013.

 

The painting portrays disgraced ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi re-inventing himself yet again and grinning typically as if nothing has ever happened to his mutilated political reputation littered with criminal charges, sex scandals and tax avoidance - but he drags behind him his real persona on a low wooden cart, armless and legless after so many political and legal scandals.

 

As in all Kaya Mar's political paintings the characters are naked, because, says the painter "If you imagine these politicians with no clothes on, they lose all their power and become the same as me and you".

 

Despite furiously saying in 2011 after he was driven from office by scandal and lawsuits that he was "leaving this shitty country", the allure of power and adulation has proved irresistible, and Berlusconi has spent the last year maneuvering himself back into the political spotlight. Berlusconi's coalition came a close second in voting for the Lower House of the Italian Parliament, and when combined with the shock protest vote for former stand-up comedian Beppe Grillo who polled a massive 25% of the vote as many Italians vented their anger at punishing austerity policies, mass unemployment and the circus of Italian politics, this week's elections have left Italian politics deadlocked, sending the markets into a panic.

 

This story can be seen on DEMOTIX in the UK and on CITIZENSIDE in France.



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