No doubt there were multiple spit takes in coffee shops all over town this morning when folks saw Geoff's front page Globe story on artist Kurt Kauper's naked paintings of Bruins legends Bobby Orr and Derek Sanderson. Even though I write for the Globe now after getting downsized by the Herald in '05, I've got to say that this is one I wish the Herald's page-one headline writers had a crack at. (High Sticking!) And this is a strange intersection of artistic freedom and privacy rights. I'm all about the freedom, but, uh, how would you feel if somebody was painting photorealistic portraits of your junk - and without having ever seen it? Orr seems like a decent and surprisingly private guy, popping up for mostly brief appearances in TV commercials occasionally. But as former Bruin Brad Park observed to Geoff, "Derek, in his heyday, would have posed for it." (I thought there was a Playgirl spread, involving a big fur coat, but can't find any evidence of such online - probably that was Sanderson's nightclub partner Joe Namath.) ... A word to the curious. Despite appearances, the truncated picture on page 1 today (above) is actually rather demure thanks to a well-placed hand. If you want the full monty, try the other "installation pictures" here.
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