The European Parliament is temporarily playing host to an eight-foot golden statue depicting a naked and grotesquely caricatured President Donald Trump, after a left-wing Danish lawmaker invited the artwork to Strasbourg.
Created by Danish artist Jens Galschiot, the sculpture is titled The Orange Plague. It depicts Trump holding a golf club and the scales of justice while sitting on the shoulders of another man.
The gilded statue was installed Tuesday in a major thoroughfare connecting European Parliament offices in Strasbourg, France, where lawmakers and visitors will pass it until its scheduled removal Thursday.
Galschiot made the political purpose of the work clear.
“Trump represents one of the greatest threats to the rules-based world order, democratic values and our common effort to solving the climate crisis,” the artist said.
The installation was invited to Parliament by Danish MEP Per Clausen, a member of the Red-Green Alliance. Clausen dismissed potential objections to the depiction, arguing that Trump should be able to take the insult and would be “thin skinned” if offended by it.
Not everyone in Parliament was amused.
Barbara Bonte, an MEP with the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Belang party, blasted the display as a political attack masquerading as art.
“What a disgrace. A gold-plated, naked Donald Trump,” Bonte wrote. “The people who lecture the world on dignity can’t even manage basic respect for the president of a friendly nation.”
The episode presents an awkward contrast for a European political establishment that routinely speaks about diplomatic norms, democratic values and the importance of maintaining close relations with the United States.
Apparently, those standards have limits.
The statue is not new. The Orange Plague was previously displayed on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference earlier this year. At the time, it appeared in bronze. It has since received its conspicuous gold-leaf makeover.
Visitors to the Strasbourg display are also reportedly being offered miniature versions of the sculpture as keepsakes.
The installation will disappear from the European Parliament on Thursday. The contempt behind it is considerably harder to miss.