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Obamas Unveil Official Paintings at National Portrait Gallery
Barack and Michelle Obama were on hand at the National Portrait Gallery Monday morning to unveil their official portraits. And, um, here they are:
No, this is not The Onion, but the actual portraits. Barack Obama, apparently being consumed by a hedge, was painted by Kehinde Wiley. Michelle Obama, in the style of a 10th grader in 1984, was painted by Amy Sherald.
What do you think of this … art?
All of the comments have stated it so much better than I could have. So, I’ll just quote from you all. Both of those people in the paintings have lived lives removed from reality–both of them were surrounded at all times by fawning sycophants so that the Golden Couple could not help but believe that they were, in fact, Totally Awesome.
And frivolous?? The very embodiment of the term. Thanks Ricochet for helping me to articulate this. (And now I know why Obama’s voice was on my radio today when I started the truck. It was a horrible flashback moment.)
On Barrack’s painting – the actual portrait is very nice, especially the use of light and color. I’m not so enthralled with the pose; it makes him look diminished and small. I would expect something more refined, but the painting itself is very good. Now, the background and setting; they are both confusing and take away from the portrait. The idea of portraiture is to capture a person’s essence, not lose them in some kind of distracting background noise. Portraits are not meant to make some kind of point; Obama wants to be known as the first green president and not the first “black” president, that is clear. I think he overplayed that hand big time. The background distracts and was a poor choice..
Michelle’s portrait is actually nice, if a bit stylized folk artsy. It doesn’t fit as a traditional portrait, but it is quite lovely and even flattering. I really like it as an art piece, but as a portrait meant to definitively capture Michelle Obama in particular, I’m afraid it fails. I’m not sure you would recognize the figure as her unless you knew beforehand. Nonetheless, I applaud her for going bold. It is a very nice figure and a worthy painting.
That’s a disservice to both marijuana and particularly Escher.
Wow – feel like I am looking at pictures in a propaganda driven children’s book.
This is actually more interesting.
I dunno. With the Obamas, losing them in some kind of distracting background noise captures their essence.
Velllllly interesting….
(With apologies to Artie Johnson).
My comment wasn’t meant as a criticism of the Obama’s though I have plenty of those, at least for him. For her I don’t frankly know enough about her to really criticize her earnestly. My comment was about the unreality of the portraits. The way they are done doesn’t make them seem like real people. Imagine you are seeing these paintings in 200 years and you never studied history much. What would you think of them? Would you think that Obama had once been president of the United States that she had been first lady? Those painting seem devoid of soul. Now maybe I’m being unfair because I am comparing them in my mind to Vermeer, Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and other Dutch masters, but honestly they aren’t very good and I think their not very good for the same reason most modern art isn’t very good. It has no soul that comes across from the canvas. I am sure though that there is a whole paragraph of text that explains the whole thing elaborately, and how this is a homage or allusion to something or other. Even the portrait of Reagan earlier in the thread seems highly mediocre to me, though since it is more classical in presentation is less abrasive to the eyes.
Okay so now I’ve sunk an hour of my day looking a presidential portraits and portraits in general on google. And I have come to a more coherent and focused criticism. Not just of these portraits of the Obamas but even of the ones of George and Laura Bush. Most classical portraits have dark backgrounds or very simple neutral background with highlighting around the head. The effect of this is to draw attention to the face (which naturally is the whole point of a portrait). Modern portraits seem ignore this and make the background too bright and often filled with too much stuff or just be a flat unnatural blue. The effect of this is to blur the focus from the face of the subject. It makes the painting of then look like a cheap magazine spread or in the case of Mrs Obama like some one pasted a drawing of her onto blue craft paper. This is also not helped by the fact that the detail on the faces seems insufficient. This is especially the case for Michele. It is just sad.
I couldn’t dislike either portrait more than I do: I want to pluck him out of the greenery like a weed–and her dress is awful and is that supposed to be a modern art depiction of her–it doesn’t even look like her. I plan on this being the first and last times I will have to look at them.
My God, these are horrid. But, garbage in, garbage out. I hope these pieces of . . . art, will remind all of us why we should never let a man such as Obama near the White House again. He continues to demean the office.
Have the Obamas ever done anything that we didn’t pay for?
Not a big fan of this Reagan painting either. It is amateurish and it does not capture the man well.
Could have been worse.
Much worse . . .
I guess its a reason not to go to the national gallery. Not so much because the Obama portraits are there – but because all of the presidents are. What would be really interesting – if there could be an exhibit of presidential caricatures, how contemporary cartoonists drew the presidents of their days. That could be quite interesting. Especially for the more obscure presidents like Peirce and Buchanan.
No NO… DONT! The Trumps havent done theirs yet! Dont give’em any ideas…
“They’ve told me for the last 8 years the Emperor has no clothes … So now behold! I told you there was no problem in that department!”
The stark difference in style between these paintings and all the other “official portraits” once again communicates how he’s not like the rest of us and doesn’t want to be associated with us.
I looked at the other paintings by . . . whosit . . . and so yeah, it looks like his style is to paint people against busy, patterned backgrounds. And if you put this portrait of Obama against all those others, this is one of his substandard efforts.
I would have expected nothing less
You took the words right out of my
mouthkeyboard.Especially because, for all his aesthetic faults, I really don’t see Trump doing something nearly as tacky as this. Out-tacky-ing Donald Trump is not an easy thing to do.
That actually seemed odd to me: that there were other paintings that were pretty much the same thing. The subject on a background of aspidistra, or whatever all that vegetation is meant to be. And the painter says something about representing Kenya and Hawaii, but if you very often frame your subjects in salad, it doesn’t signify anything at all.
And I agree with whoever said that Michelle looks like a 10th grade art project. She doesn’t have quite enough top to her head, and she’s gray. Also, shouldn’t they sort of go together?
Maybe in real life, these are better paintings than they are when reproduced? But Ben Shapiro tweeted out a satirical Kandinsky and I saw it and thought: Oh, if only!
I don’t think she ever had hair quite that long, but the main thing is, she is more like a poster treatment than a portrait…too “flat” and lacking depth, highlights, shadows etc. His bothers the long-ago botany student in me in having a mismash of flowers that would never occur in nature together…not at least on the same sea of foliage.
But what really strikes me when they are side by side (although from different artists) is that they have such different skin colors….making kind of a weird effect. Surely that wasn’t intentional but I would have expected them to be compared before final approval, if to be hung adjacent to each other….
Sorry…I lost my head…
Here, courtesy of Wikipedia, are all the “official portraits” together in one table.
Prior to Obama’s, Kennedy’s stands out as being quite different than the others. Somber, downcast.
Now, of course, Obama’s really stands out. Way out.
Nestled into a tossed salad (thanks, Kate), stooped over on a floating chair with creepy, elongated hands.
They’ll be hung in separate galleries. He goes in with the Presidents, she goes …elsewhere. (It wasn’t clear in the story I read if there’s an actual “first ladies” gallery.
I believe that the first ladies are on rotation. The presidents are permanent.
Or white. Does that make me a racist to notice?
Sherald doesn’t paint black people either, though. She paints ashen people. I mean, really? Michelle comes off as cold and condescending, but she has warmer hues in her skin tone than that! Yikes!
Wait. These are for real?!?!? I saw this and another post earlier today and passed over them thinking they were somehow just jokes. As opposed to actual, for real portraiture. Who approved these things?
Q: Why is a portrait like a joke?
A: Because if you have to explain it, it has failed.