No, the headline refers to a painting by French artist Gustave Courbet. The NY Times used a picture of Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy in front of this painting as an illustration of its article “Despite Report, France and Germany Keep Pressure on Iran.”
Apparently the German and French leaders said they had not changed their minds despite the findings of the American intelligence estimate released Monday, which some believed would have eroded support for tougher new sanctions.
BAGnewsNotes writes about the NY Times article and republishes the photo and asks an interesting question: “How does the painting — a self-portrait by French artist Gustave Courbet titled ‘Desperate Man’ — map to the story, as well as mix with the interplay between the heads of state?”
Cross-posted from Atlantic Review.
Joerg Wolf is founder and editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Review (http://atlanticreview.org), a blog on transatlantic relations sponsored by the German Fulbright Alumni Association.
He currently works as editor-in-chief of the Open Think Tank atlantic-community.org in Berlin.
Joerg studied political science at the Free University of Berlin and worked as a research associate for the International Risk Policy project at the Free University’s Center for Transatlantic Foreign and Security Policy. He has been a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Washington DC and has worked for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Cairo and in Berlin.