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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
Yeah, still not seeing it. For the reasons mentioned above. – The underbite shows up when her mouth is closed.
(right photo is from July 12, 2017)
On balance not too bad.
I bow before your better photoshop skilz. I still don’t see it.
Then again, I think Ted Cruz looks a little like Grandpa Munster AND a younger Richard Nixon.
The artist is talented, but not that talented. The too-many-teeth-for-the-lips-to-contain is there as well as the over-long chin. The eyes aren’t quite the right shape (nor the eyebrows, but eyebrows fed on pencils and plucking are migratory creatures). The right side of the face in both pictures is quite close. The left side less so, but that might be because of the head tilt she gets with the chin-on-hand pose and the difference in smilage which would put the upper cheek further out while pulling the lower cheek in, giving the near-straight line in the photo. It might not get her caught as a police sketch, but we don’t have anything on her anyway.
You’re bang-on regarding Cruz and his son-in-law John Kerry.
You are gonna have to show me this one.
This is not my work.
Your comment was nagging at me until I went to lunch and realized you were talking about Grandpa and Herman.
Re: # 150
“Oh, I think it’s fitting, I just don’t care for it aesthetically.”
That’s exactly how I feel about Wiley’s picture of the former President looking like a discarded idol being swallowed by a tropical forest.
(Weird: Whatever he consciously meant to do, there’s some deeper level on which Wiley knows that Obama is a fraud. And that deeper knowing came out in the painting.
But the thing is still an eyesore.)
Some funny takes on Obama’s portrait today at Powerline:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/02/the-week-in-pictures-indictments-edition.php
Those are great! Love the one with the Obama portrait outside Don’s Oval. Hilarious!
A quick portrait of Presidential leadership, competence and bravery…and uh…not so much:
Nice photoshop. You can even see the bullet in O’Barney’s pocket.
I think you are referring to his left hand which hints at having a thumb on the bottom, which would be anatomically backwards. (The real thumb should be, and is, presumably behind the upper part of the hand and not seen.)
What we are really seeing is a normal bulge of flesh on the side of his hand that is awkwardly painted, and kind of resembles the beginning of a thumb. While this may be technically correct, it looks weird and it is a fault of the artist for letting it linterfere with the normal presumption of what a hand should look like, unless he was just trying to be weird. I suspect the former.
This could have been easily solved by controlling the lighting on his hands to show off the form. The lighting on Obama’s figure comes from several different directions which leads me to believe that the artist did not control the lighting, but simply used whatever lights were on in the room. This is a common problem with many modern portrait artists who do not know the benefits of good lighting. The multiple light sources do not show Obama’s form very well and it contributes to the overall “flatness” of the painting.
Michele’s painting looks flat too, but it doesn’t matter. It is a patterned design that does not need depth and form. Having said that, I still think it is mediocre. I have seen paintings done in the same style by my own mother that would blow this painting out of the water.
[Wanted larger pics, they were already there when I posted]
There’s an official art word or movement name for the flatification of the picture plane. I vaguely remember an art teacher in the ’80s telling me that it was a thing.
I don’t remember an artistic term for it, but in today’s digital world they call it “posterized,” like a poster. Although the colors in my mother’s paintings are rendered “flat,” the paintings actually have depth-of-field and the picture plane does not appear flat. Michele’s portrait has almost no depth-of-field. There’s not much more in Barack’s, either.
Re: # 163
Steven Seward, thank you for sharing your mother’s paintings. They’re lovely.
Thank you also for solving the mystery of Obama’s hand. Would it be possible for Wiley, or some artist, to erase and redo or fix just that ? If he fixed the hand, the painting would, at least, be all bad on purpose instead of looking like he didn’t have the skills for the job. The guy’s other paintings are also an ew-what-he-made, but they don’t look technically inept.
I want to write something else about the painting of Michelle Obama, but Tom wants the computer.
Agreed! I’m not even a fan of modern art, but Mama Seward’s paintings are gorgeous! I’d even hang those “posters” in my living room!
Re: #168
Very warm and full of love as well as beautiful.
(I’m still thinking about what I want to say about the painting of Michelle Obama. Be back in a while.)
Just don’t look for the words in the Urban Dictionary.
It is entirely possible to fix or re-do an oil or acrylic painting. (Secret: I have “fixed” paintings for a few unsatisfied clients of other artists, including one of my own father’s!)
O.K., the portrait of Michelle.
We’ve all heard the old joke about the football player who scores a touchdown. His coach critiques the play later saying this and that was wrong with it. Finally, the player says “How was it for distance?”.
So why do I think this portrait is a touchdown?
Does anyone remember Andrew Klavan once, on a podcast, saying something close to this about Michelle Obama: What must it be like to be on display, being scrutinized by the whole world, as people and events reveal to you that so much of what you’ve been told to believe, and want to believe, is a lie ?
To me, this portrait is an honest but compassionate depiction of First Lady Michelle Obama dealing with having that experience.
It’s beautiful.
Re# 170
Instugator, shut up.
(Seriously, I’m very much looking forward to meeting you and everyone else here one day.)
It’s easy enough to do. Aaron Miller drove in from TX for one of the Nashville meetups.
Steven Seward, does your mother sell prints of her work? I especially love the second one.
Sure, but she has been inactive as an artist for a long time. She is in the hospital right now, having fallen flat on her face and broken a number of the bones around her nose. She is 89 years old. She’s already had successful surgery to repair everything and is on the mend.
I will forward your inquiry tomorrow when I visit her. The second painting is an actual painting and not a print. The first one was a silk screen print. Here is one more. This is an incredibly complex 26-color silk screen print entitled “The Grape Inspector.”
Re: 175
Thank you.
The fall must have been scary for both of you. I’m very glad to hear she’s on the mend.
I love The Grape Inspector too.
I don’t much care for the style. (No offense to Mama Seward, but they look like cartoons to me.) That said, within the limitations of the style, I can’t find much fault with her ability.
I know what you mean, but rather than cartoonish, I prefer to see them as a form of art nouveau. They’re too beautifully executed for cartoons.
You’re overthinking this. The purpose of a Presidential or First Lady’s portrait is to capture the subject’s appearance in a dignified manner so future generations will have some idea of who they’re learning about. Both paintings stand out as visual middle fingers to the tradition and dignity established by their predecessors; even the Clintons had the good sense to at least pretend to be dignified for their portraits. These paintings are eyesores, and for all I know they were meant to be so because the Obamas were and remain petulant children whose life’s purpose seems to be to be as mindlessly rebellious as possible.
After this nonsense, what’s to prevent a future President from choosing a series of emoticons to represent him?
As the saying goes, “I may not know much about art, but I know what I like.”
Or in this case, “I know what I see.” :)