Obama himself is smizing in a black suit and white tie straight out of junior prom, against a backdrop so vacant it seems computer rendered. It is hyperrealistic to the point that it plausibly could have been traced from an actual photograph. Barack’s looks like a stock photo you’d find in a prefab frame. The Obamas’ likenesses are vaguely revealing in that respect. Bush Jr.’s portrait seems to share an illustration style with the kids show, Arthur, a choice that needs little elaboration, and Trump doesn’t have one, which makes its own kind of sense. Take Lincoln’s, which has him posing like The Thinker, or Nixon’s, which makes him look meaner, like he’s about to give some teen a good grounding. Departures from the typical formula tend to speak directly to the president’s personality, or at least the artist’s idea of it. The process of writing, editing, and publishing things for a large audience tends to be much more haphazard than either our detractors or fans think, and more messy that we'd all like to let on, at both glossy prestigious magazines and at charmingly amateurish. It is customary for the White House to honor its past occupants like this, though Trump skipped over the procedure during his presidency and COVID delayed this one by some two and a half years.Īs a whole, the collection tends to go for a specific look: gold frames, a classic contrapposto, and conventionally realist figuration - though the post-Reagan renderings took some facial liberties - with any attempt at abstraction relegated to the blurry background. Welcome to Sausage, a Blog About How Gawker Is Made. The new pieces were commissioned by the White House Historical Association to join the White House collection, alongside paintings of other former First Families, like the pair of George and Laura Bush that the Obamas unveiled in 2012.
0 kommentar(er)
