National Post

Our muse the mayor: Artwork inspired by Rob Ford is easy to spot, but why?
He scales the CN Tower, a suited King Kong menacing Hogtown with a streetcar teetering in his clutches. In this Web cartoon, his belly tugs at his shirt buttons. They strain not to pop off.

A local newspaper political cartoonist has him as an elephant one day, and later as a sumo wrestler. To a local graffiti artist, he is both the egg-shaped Humpty Dumpty and the balloon-bellied Tweedledee (or perhaps Tweedledum?). To another he is a frog-mouthed, roly-poly quasi-monster who devours pink bicycles.

Across genres and media, Rob Ford may be caricatured more frequently and viciously than any local public figure in memory. He’s a credible candidate for the second-most ridiculed politician in Canada, after the Prime Minister.

What makes the Mayor such a tantalizing muse to the city’s visual artists?