Artist unveils shocking paintings superimposed with porn in Sydney

In what could be called an art exhibition designed to shock, an artist has superimposed hardcore porn on many classic artworks, including the renaissance painting of the Madonna and child.
 
The works by Sydney artist Rodney Pople go on exhibition in Paddington next week with a warning on the gallery's door they "may offend".

Pople's exhibition, titled Bellini 21c, includes a work called Altarpiece in which the figures in the famous Bellini altarpiece in Venice are obscured by an image of a woman being penetrated from behind and having oral sex.

Another work features the altarpiece with a photograph of a woman exposing her genitals.

Pople photographed the altarpiece last year, then used digital technology to add pornography taken from magazines found by his wife, curator Felicity Fenner.

Then he went on to make large photo prints of the hybrid image, and added oil paint.

The artworks are operatically beautiful but deeply unsettling.

The top price for one of the paintings titled Bellini Altarpiece (triptych) is $65,000.

While Pople admits the works were deliberately provocative, but said he wanted to highlight moral corruption within Western civilisation's established "hierarchies", not just the church but politics and business.

The porn star represented a "contemporary version" of the Madonna, representing society's degradation.

"My paintings challenge the facade of our politically correct society by hinting, with an unabashed use of fiction and exaggeration, what might lie beneath the surface,” News.com.au quoted Pople as saying.

Australian Galleries, where the exhibition opens on Tuesday, took legal advice and posted the warning sign.