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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?
Published in Culture
His wouldn’t suck if there was ground under his feat.
It’s paradoxical. If the intent of portraiture is to capture the truth of the individual, then these are very good portraits. They’re very bad portraits, but they’re of very bad people. Therefore, they succeeded, which makes them good portraits.
Hope they kept the receipt.
Pretty sure we paid for those.
Besides being weird, Michelle’s painting doesn’t look anything like her. As for Barack, the concept of sitting in the middle of what looks like ivy is almost as weird, but at least you can tell it’s him.
Two thumbs down for each painting.
Given the result, I was somewhat curious is the Obama’s actually had any input into the pictures. Apparently, they had some input.
How ironic that Obama went straight to Napoleon at the suggestion of being on a horse. That definitely says more about Obama than the painter.
To answer your basic question, Jon: Not much.
More of their work:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Kehinde+Wiley&source=lnms&tbm=isch
https://www.google.com/search?q=Amy+Sherald&source=lnms&tbm=isch
The way these pictures turned out can’t be too much of a surprise to anyone who’s looked at their oeuvres.
Apparently neither has ever painted a person looking happy.
Couldn’t Barack be portrayed in a more masculine setting? The other painting doesn’t even look like Michelle.
Sublime, breathtaking, groundbreaking and truth told in oil on canvas.
(I’ll try to make time to visit the rest of you in the camps,…haters!)
Of course not. We are talking Barack Obama, mom-jeans man. But at least he put Bush behind him.
It’s her spirit image. It is what she sees herself as.
Something was bugging me about Barak’s portrait, and I finally figured it out: There’s no perspective. The leaves are the same size, regardless of whether they’re in front of the chair or behind it. It gives the painting a flat look, even though the chair has some perspective.
A 10th grade prom queen posing for a 9th grade drawing class?
Bronco’s portrait looks like a few of the paintings we collected when we lived in Indonesia – the background is very Balinese. Sort of goofy for a Presidential portrait but he probably ate a few of those special Balinese mushroom omelettes when he lived there and this is how he imagines himself in his flashbacks. And it’s how I imagine him too: without substance, just like his Presidency.
This is Michelle’s finished portrait.
They kind of remind me of the drawings kids would send in to Highlights magazine. (Portraits of Goofus and Gallant?)
These are actually good. The problem with modern artists isn’t that they’re bad it’s that they don’t reverence anything and so draw garbage because that’s how they see the world. Except, modern liberals worship the Obamas. this is the equivalent of asking a renaissance artist to paint the crucifixion.
Ivy is very important to his life story. Remember in 2008 when we asked, “What has he done to deserve being President?” and all the Left could come up with was, “He went to Harvard?”
As for the paintings themselves; they both look like the work of painters (and probably subjects) who are more interested in being “original” than in producing good work, which is the curse of all (small m) modern art. In that sense they perfectly capture the zeitgeist of the coalition that put him in the White House in the first place.
To me, they both really have the look of Public High School Senior Class Art Exhibit projects.
What, no polar bears, no solar panels, no nuns being turned out of their homes for the elderly poor, no mule trains carrying firearms into Mexico crossing the Arizona border. So much legacy, so little canvas.
That was exactly what I thought! LOL.
A “bloody photographer” would have been better in this case.
What a horrible thing to do to Klimt!
The NY Times explained to we plebes that the portraits are meant to express more than just what the Obamas look like (because that would be too ‘normal’) but rather express the vision and the purpose of their time in the White House.
So to recap, the Obama portrait appeals to the elites among us, and no one else.
Just like his Presidency did.
They appeal to me, too. That’s because I believe them hilarious – a more perfect representation of this pair of grifters I cannot imagine.
I thought this was the official portrait:
Although, frankly, I prefer this one:
I think JibJab did it better:
I guess I can appreciate the modesty. I would have thought Barack would have been portrayed parting the red sea like Charlton Heston. But he was never able to stop the oceans from rising. Sort of one of his many failures.
I say whatever floats their boat, though I also wondered if that was the first time they had seen the paintings… during the “unveil.”
I don’t really mind the garden wall, though it will look out of place next to more traditional styles of portraiture. I dislike Michelle’s portrait because I really would not recognize her. At all.
I don’t know a lot about art, but I think Hans Holbein was going for heroic “spirit animals,” too, when he captured the Tudor Court. He surely painted Henry VIII in the best possible light so as not to lose his head. However, by all accounts, the images still resembled their subjects, yes? Even if forever young and virile.
I don’t think it sends a great message to young girls when the painting itself looks like it’s… I don’t know… abstractly airbrushed?
Even if I’m not a huge fan, I do think the former first lady is an attractive woman without purposely rearranging her face.