Favorite Wall Street Whipping Boys

Throughout the financial crisis, New York based artist Geoffrey Raymond has been hard at work creating portraits of controversial Wall Street figures.

When a painting is completed, Raymond exhibits them in front of Manhattan’s key financial venues, inviting people – with pen in hand - to write their thoughts directly onto the canvas.  Over the past year, Raymond’s paintings have offered a venue for the public to vent their anger.

We asked Raymond for a selection of his paintings for which he has also provided his insight on the works themselves. Click ahead to see select portraits of Wall Street Whipping Boys!

Posted Oct 1 2009

“The actual image is a scene from Sergei Eisenstein's movie The Battleship Potemkin.  It depicts a peasant woman getting shot through the eye. I painted it in March of 2009, a year after the Bear Stearns explosion and more or less right in the middle of the worst of the financial times."

"I was looking for an image to represent the average American.  Getting shot through the eye was metaphorically appropriate, I thought.  And I liked that it was a woman.” – Geoffrey Raymond

“Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was annotated over the course of the summer of 08.  Each color pen is tied to a headline from a major paper that I wrote on the painting at the beginning of the day.” – Geoffrey Raymond

“A portrait of Dick Fuld painted immediately before the Lehman bankruptcy and annotated (green for Lehman employees, black for everybody else) in front of the building in the days shortly afterward.” – Geoffrey Raymond

“Big Lloyd 3 means it's the third time I've painted Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.  The Root has several meanings, certainly one of which is the reference to the saying ‘money is the root of all evil’ --although I'm not a Blankfein basher.” – Geoffrey Raymond

“Former treasurer Hank Paulson was painted one year after the decision not to bail out Lehman Brothers.  The painting was annotated in front of the old Lehman building; Lehman ex-employees got green pens, everybody else got a black pen.” – Geoffrey Raymond

“A rethinking of the first Dick Fuld painting, acknowledging the one year anniversary of the Lehman bankruptcy.  Paired with Blue Paulson and annotated outside the old Lehman building one year later.” – Geoffrey Raymond

“A portrait of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, annotated the days immediately after his testimony to Congress last year in which he admitted that his belief in the self-correcting nature of unfettered markets was flawed.” – Geoffrey Raymond

“A portrait of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.  I liked it so much white that I decided not to take annotations.  The red adds a demonic note but I, personally, think Geithner is doing an okay job.” – Geoffrey Raymond

“A portrait of Hank Paulson painted in October, in the middle of the Bush Administration’s initial bailout efforts.  I liked the idea of him drowning in a sea of red ink--thus the red markers.  The title is a reference to Francis Bacon's ‘screaming pope’ series, which in turn is a reference to Diego Velazquez' portrait of Pope Innocent X.” – Geoffrey Raymond

“A man adds his thoughts to a Bernanke portrait at the New York Stock Exchange. The painting is named 'The Annotated Fed.’ ” – Geoffrey Raymond

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