A topless portrait of Bea Arthur caused a stir -- and later broke the bank -- when it went up for auction Wedenesday night.

John Currin's 1991 painting, succinctly titled Bea Arthur Naked, sold for $1.9 million at Christie's, as part of a larger scale art exhibition. The painting by the American artist sets the late actress against a pale yellow background and bares her, well, "golden girls" to the viewer.

Christie's auction lot notes claim that Currin is "recognized as one of the leading figurative painters in contemporary art" who "creates provocative images that examine the tradition of painting and the role of the female nude in art."

The painting is later described as "simultaneously nostalgic and repelling."

Curran has said he used Arthur's famous character Maude as his inspiration, and completed Bea Arthur Naked while working on another series on middle-aged women. "[The] Bea Arthur painting is from Maude, which I used to watch as a kid," he said. "I had a vision in my head of Bea Arthur, and I found a picture of her. I was going to put a scarf ensemble on her like that from her Maude days, and I drew the body just to drape it.

"It was then that I realized that the painting was fantastic as it was. I loved being repelled by those two black eyes and falling back into these wonderful, soft breasts, which draw you back in," he continued. "I thought about the personae of the middle-aged women that were pictured in this series, and I imagined them as being divorced and cast out, like harlequins wandering the beach. They are all self-portraits in a sense."

Currin's work has been somewhat controversial since its creation, and reporting the news of the auction even got The Daily Beast temporarily banned from their Facebook account for showing an uncensored version of the painting.

The actress did get a chance to weigh in on her portrait. "Maybe he was attracted to the feminist movement of the 1970s," Arthur was once quoted as saying. "Because of Maude, I was the Joan of Arc of feminism. He certainly couldn't have done anything with Marlo Thomas of That Girl."

Arthur was best known for her work in television, winning Lead Actress Emmys for Maude and The Golden Girls. She died of cancer at age 86 in 2009.

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