New York artist Kurt Kauper's exhibit of oil paintings Everybody Knew That Canadians Were The Best Hockey Players is drawing attention in part because of the subjects — the hockey greats of the early '70s.

But more arresting for many viewers is what is missing — Bobby Orr's uniform.

Kauper, an Indianapolis-born artist based in New York, has painted the former Boston Bruins' legend in the nude.

Not only Parry Sound, Ont., native Orr, but also Niagara Falls, Ont.-born Derek Sanderson, shown in a wood-panelled 1970s rec room, also in the buff.

Kauper was interested in the iconic nature of these celebrities and their influence on popular culture, he told CBC Radio's cultural affairs show Q.

"I was … interested in the way the male nude is received in our culture," he said. "I think that it's seen as something dangerous and threatening. And that's not at all true for the female nude.

"It's almost impossible to show a full-frontal male nude," he added. "To show a male nude is to suggest that men and masculinity are passive objects to be looked at and I don't think that our culture wants to think about men in those terms."

Kauper admits the paintings are works of the imagination with neither player posing for the portraits.

Rather, they were taken from public images of the players that gripped Kauper's imagination as a child.

"I was completely obsessed with Bobby Orr when I was six, seven and eight, so much that I always wanted to be Bobby Orr, including when I was playing in the neighbourhood.… If we were playing cops and robbers, I thought of myself as Bobby Orr moonlighting as a cop," he said.

The exhibit at the Deitch Projects Gallery in New York also includes portraits of the hockey greats, this time in uniform, taken from old hockey cards.

Kauper says he's been repeatedly asked about his sexuality since the exhibit opened. He's straight, but he says sexuality is not the point.

It's a "kind of investigation of media images influential to me as a child," he said.

Neither Sanderson, now a businessman in the Boston area, nor Orr, who declined comment, gave permission for the works.
 
"I completely understand the discomfort that either one of those men would feel with those paintings, but I guess I don't feel they would have a right to intervene in any way," Kauper said.

"When people decide they are going to be public figures … they are allowing their image to enter the culture," he said. "People have a right to grapple with that image."

The exhibit continues at the Deitch Projects gallery in New York until Dec. 15.