Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

You are here: Home / Popular Culture / KULCHA! / KULCHA! Open Thread: Those Are A Couple of Very Fine Portraits

KULCHA! Open Thread: Those Are A Couple of Very Fine Portraits

by | 138 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Yeah, I know Betty beat me to it, but it’s the dead hour so I’m gonna indulge myself. As someone who spent many, many weekends during my childhood investigating all the best public-access museums in New York City, I really like the new Obama portraits. They are, IMO, good art. And they are also good political statements — if you think that art is ever “distinct” from politics, you have not read much art history.

Most presidential portraits, even the “famous” ones, have a strong whiff of Sears Portrait Studio with a sidebar of Thomas Kinkade. They are not meant to inform, or to be a ‘true’ likeness of the president portrayed; they are meant to imitate/immortalize whatever the current power structure’s idea of Respectable Leadership looks like. For our modern era, that’s meant White Guy in Suit At His Office, looking self-consciously charming or vaguely constipated, depending on the whims of the sitter and the artist.

Kehinde Wiley’s and Amy Sherald’s portraits are so much not that. But of course, President and Michelle Obama were so much not what a lot of people expected from “our” president, either. Like their subjects, both pictures are striking and intelligent and impossible to ignore. And color-ful (you should forgive me saying). I think Wiley’s painting will end up in the (admittedly specialized) pantheon with Gilbert Stuart’s Washington and Matthew Brady’s Lincoln.

Also, the reactions from both Obamas, very cool:


More werds, from professional art critics. Jerry Saltz, at NYMag:

… Wiley rises to the occasion, giving us a troubled, human, pure-of-heart Rock of Gibraltar seated on a hard wooden seat that hints at the bare-bones look of African tribal chairs. The president is seated in and among — not out front and center of — a verdigris overgrowth of flowers. He’s almost fighting for the stage that is already growing over him. But he remains. Real, insistent, a reminder or compass. By not resorting to his usual bravado and monumental, heroic grandiosity that tends to so elevate his subjects that the paintings become closer to kitsch, Wiley’s treatment of Obama allows the person and the ideas represented to bloom much more fully.

Seating the president lower this way, enmeshing him in an overabundant, highly colorful natural setting, sustains a much more mysteriously human presence, brooding, reconciling, not merely knowing, separate, but kindled with fiery curiosity, a simple inner elevation that brings us to the border of the ordinary and the extraordinary. It’s exactly the metaphysical place Obama embodied as president of all America. The pose and enclosing him this way will irk many who will see Obama being made too normal, small, not central, not in grandeur, not an imperial god. I think the picture is true to the way Obama carries himself. He’s clearly the central subject but not entirely central; there’s a lot going on around him to contend with, negotiate; he’s open to his surroundings, part of them, bigger than they are but not the only thing present. He’s still fighting for space. Wiley even gets some of Obama’s melancholy, his tranquilizing thoughtfulness, the whispering sense that he will not be smote…

Phillip Kennicott, at the Washington Post:

… [B]oth artists have stressed the importance of creating portraiture of African Americans that will reconfigure the canon and the museum in more inclusive ways. Dorothy Moss, curator of painting and sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery, remembers seeing Sherald engage with young African American girls at a gallery talk. “She bent down and looked at them and said, ‘I painted this for you so that when you go to a museum you will see someone who looks like you on the wall.’ ” Wiley, too, has focused throughout his career on inserting black faces and figures into the traditional context of elite, aristocratic portraiture, although with ambiguous results: It is never clear whether the goal is to remedy the omission, or destabilize the tradition.

The two portraits render their subjects life-size, which underscores their historical importance and accomplishments. Although the artists worked independently of each other, and their works aren’t meant to be seen side by side (they will reside in different galleries when they go on view), they make a curious pairing. Both capture elements that their subjects carefully curated during their public life as president and first lady. A swelling vein on the left side of the president’s face, and the intensity of his gaze, suggest the “doesn’t suffer fools gladly” impatience that occasionally flashed from him, a marked contrast with the smiling and laughing photographic portraits by Chuck Close that have until now stood in for the official portrait in the “America’s Presidents” exhibition…

The Obamas’ potential to change the tone and political culture of this country was blunted by the persistence of that racism before and during their time at the country’s political apex. Now that they have left office, now that their fundamental decency is in high relief by contrast with the new political order, memory is refreshed. They look a bit older than the two people who carried so much collective fantasy of a different America with them to Washington nine years ago. That fantasy was premature and unrealistic, and it is only now clear how powerfully it animated the meanest impulses of those who reject it. But these portraits will remind future generations how much wish fulfillment was embodied in the Obamas, and how gracefully they bore that burden.

Sidebar, also from WaPo, fashion writer Robin Givhan: “The Michelle Obama portrait is striking — and so is the gown she wore for it. This is its story”. Stretch cotton poplin and side-seam pockets, yes!

Second sidebar, I am extremely glad Twitter finally pulled Paul Nehlen’s account before the unveiling. I hope it’s causing him severe emotional pain not to be able to share his ‘thoughts’.

(Only if someone else writes the check, because as I understand it McNaughton only works cash-up-front.)

Reader Interactions

138Comments

  1. 1.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Speaking of art. Drumpf couldn’t rip off a van Gogh so he’s using his personal collection for his office (photo)

  2. 2.

    Mary G

    I have so enjoyed the gnashing of wingnut teeth on Twitter today. They seem to have settled for OMG Obama has an extra finger!

    As someone fairly ignorant of modern art I had never heard of either artist, now I want to go to their shows and buy posters from museum shops, which don’t seem to be around yet, but I am sure there will be.

  3. 3.

    satby

    Nehlen’s an asshole, and probably won’t win the R primary against Ryan, but I hope Ironstache Randy Bryce curb stomps Ryan in the general.

  6. 6.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Elaine De Kooning did some fascinating portraits of JFK (photo)

    “When I first saw him, he was bigger than life. It wasn’t that he was really taller than the others. But he seemed to be in a different dimension. The eyes were a total surprise to me. I have never seen the color in photographs—the violet of grapes!”

    In the golden sunlight of Florida, Kennedy seemed to radiate warmth and color—and an energy that became a struggle for the artist:

    “All my sketches from life as he talked on the phone, jotted down notes, read papers, held conferences, had to be made very quickly, catching features and gestures, half for memory, even as I looked, because he never sat still. It was not so much that he seemed restless, rather, he sat like an athlete or college boy, constantly shifting in his chair. At first this impression of youthfulness was a hurdle, as was the fact that he never sat still.”

  7. 7.

    Jeff

    The only problem I have with Michelle’s portrait is it doesn’t look like her. Not told who it was I would think it a highly stylized generic painting of a black woman.

  10. 10.

    NotMax

    If the WaPo link about Nehlen’s Twitter account is borked for others as it is for me, a story at (of all places) the Washington Times from a couple of days ago summarily lays it out.

  11. 11.

    satby

    @Steve in the ATL: oh, there’s enough assholes around there that would vote for him, but the preponderance of Republicans in that district like to think of themselves as genteel, old fashioned fiscal conservatives (I know people in that area). Overt racism turns them off, even though I consider most of them racist too.

  13. 13.

    Baud

    For your morning amusement, the Intern’s Revenge

    A Chicago TV station apologized for using “P.F. Chang” in a graphic about the Winter Olympics, instead of PyeongChang, the name of the South Korean county hosting the Games. P.F. Chang’s is the name of an “Asian restaurant concept” chain with over 200 locations in the U.S., including several in the Chicago area.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2018/02/13/tv-station-apologizes-for-using-p-f-chang-instead-of-pyeongchang-in-olympics-graphic/

  14. 14.

    geg6

    @Jeff:

    I do not agree. I love it. And I saw her right away. I think people are having troubl with it because she’s not the smiling, bouncy Michelle we think of in the portrait. But it’s unmistakably her.

  18. 18.

    ThresherK

    @Elizabelle: Fastest 8 years of Michelle’s life too, seeing how she’s hardly aged a day in the about ten years since I first ever saw her.

    –

    It occurs to me that there’s no “official” President and First Lady together portrait, is there? How often are the separate official portraits done in such different styles?

  19. 19.

    NotMax

    Strictly FYI.

    Why is Omarosa scared of a Pence presidency? ‘He thinks Jesus tells him to say things’
    [snip]
    On Monday night’s episode Omarosa, who previously declared on the show that she wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump again “in a million years”, said that a Mike Pence administration would actually be worse. Source

  22. 22.

    balconesfault

    to be seen in every black church beginning next february

    Can we get a “f*** you Cornell West!” ???

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    Dramatis persona non grata.

    Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian president-turned-Ukrainian opposition leader, was deported from Ukraine to Poland on Monday after being detained by armed, masked men at a restaurant in Kyiv and rushed to the airport, according to Ukrainian officials and his supporters.

    Ukraine’s border guard agency had to use force to counter Saakashvili’s supporters at the Kyiv airport, Oleh Slobodyan, a spokesperson for the agency, said on Facebook. Source

  26. 26.

    satby

    @Baud: so cool. I know a lot of Dems support the other Democrat in the primary, and I’m sure she’s fine, but I love the direct refutation that WWC men are a monolithic Republican block that Randy provides. Blue collar guys I know went Clinton and are reliable Den voters, all the Republicans I know have white collar jobs.

  32. 32.

    Schlemazel

    @Aimai:
    That is the artists style, her AA subjects are done in tones of gray. I get it but I don’t like it because it lakes the power and liveliness of the subject in this case. Also, it looks nothing like her which I find irritating. Lovely pictures but I am disappointed.

  35. 35.

    Frankensteinbeck

    You’re likely right, Zeddy, which brings up the possibility that Trump’s might be the first portrait galleries refuse to hang.

    if you think that art is ever “distinct” from politics, you have not read much art history.

    It’s that or soft core pornography. SO MUCH classical fine art is that.

    @NotMax:
    Yeah, the folks afraid Pence will be worse don’t underestimate Trump’s evil, they’re scared of Pence’s insanity.

  36. 36.

    Baud

    @rikyrah:

    I have a dream that one day, black superheroes will have names that won’t need to begin with “Black.”

    We still have a ways to go.

  37. 37.

    Aimai

    @Baud: i did not realuze until a recent story about white racism at sporting events that using PFChang as an anti asian slur was a thing. Its definitely the new n word style insult. Its a neo nazi move.

  38. 38.

    Steve in the ATL

    @satby:

    Blue collar guys I know went Clinton and are reliable Den voters, all the Republicans I know have white collar jobs.

    I voted for both Clintons and am a reliable Dem voter. Plus, my blue collar credentials are solid: I’m wearing a blue button down from brooks brothers.

  45. 45.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The International Ski Federation (FIS) has dismissed the concerns of snowboarders who complained about treacherous conditions at the women’s slopestyle by telling them that “nobody was forced to go down and compete”.

    A number of riders expressed their anger at the FIS’s decision to allow the event to go ahead in 30mph crosswinds on Monday, which turned one of the most exciting events at these Winter Olympics into a dangerous lottery.

    But FIS spokesperson Jenny Wiedeke insisted that while conditions were tough they were also safe. “We know it was very difficult conditions for the riders,” she said. “Each rider had two opportunities to perform their run. Nobody is forced to go down and compete.”

    That comment is bound to provoke anger from the riders, who could hardly have expected to have pulled out of an Olympic final. In total there were only nine clean runs out of 52 in total with riders falling, face-planting or pulling up because they couldn’t build enough speed.

    Do I detect a whiff of misogyny?

  47. 47.

    NotMax

    So, reports mention that Dolt 45 quickly called Putin to express condolences over the fatal jetliner crash outside Moscow.

    U.S. service member families? Las Vegas gun massacre victims’ relations? Not so much.

  48. 48.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Gotta love that Facebook ad algorithm that puts up random products while telling you which of your friends enjoy that product line.

    This morning, I got one for a line of extremely erotic lingerie (not quite to fetish wear, but going that direction), that line being “liked” by two women of my professional acquaintance. Now, whenever I talk to them, my mind’s gonna wander into the inappropriate….

  49. 49.

    Baud

    @satby: If polling is to be believed, the white blue collar people you know are the exception rather than the rule.

    @NotMax:

    Blood is thicker than water, and kompromat is thicker than both.

  52. 52.

    Kay

    @satby:

    There are a lot of blue collar Trump supporters. This county is only 25% college degree and it went 70% Trump.

    I think there’s a large cohort of blue collar male Trump supporters who are mad that they pay child support. I’m telling you there is an AMAZING correlation there. Can’t be coincidence. Show me a man who is spitting mad he’s paying child support and there’s a MAGA hat somewhere :)

  53. 53.

    Citizen Alan

    @Baud:

    Blade. Luke Cage. Static. Vixen. The latest iteration of Hawkgirl. The John Stewart Green Lantern, who is vastly superior to the Hal Jordan version. Steel (okay, maybe not that one so much).

    And given the historical political significance of the phrase Black Panther in this country, I kind of adore the fact that a movie called Black Panther is about to become a monstrous hit that will cause millions of racist white Americans to shit their pants.

  54. 54.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Police officer fired for not shooting black suspect wins $175,000

    “He wasn’t angry,” Mader previously told the Guardian. “He wasn’t aggressive, he didn’t seem in position to want to use a gun against anybody. He never pointed it at me. I didn’t perceive him as an imminent threat.”

    But amid Mader’s attempts to convince Williams to drop the weapon, two veteran officers arrived on the scene and, almost immediately, shot and killed Williams.

    Mader, an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran, received a termination letter 10 days later, which claimed that he failed to respond to the threat. “The unfortunate reality of police work is that making any decision is better than making no decision at all,” it read.

    The city said in a statement that the decision to settle was a call made by its insurance provider, and that it stood by its decision to fire Mader.

  56. 56.

    Baud

    @Citizen Alan:

    Blade. Luke Cage. Static. Vixen. The latest iteration of Hawkgirl.

    Never heard of them. I’m not into superheroes unless there’s a good movie about them.

    Not knocking Black Panther. Looks like it’ll be awesome. But between that and Black Lightning, I started noticing a pattern.

  59. 59.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Baud: We already have that, and have had since the second (mainstream-published) black super hero, Falcon.

  61. 61.

    NotMax

    @Baud

    unless there’s a good movie about them

    You get a pass on unfamiliarity with Steel, then.

    Not Shaq’s finest hour and a half.

  62. 62.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud:

    They stood up to their culture to do what was right. That’s not a easy thing to do.

    Speaking as real live blue collar guy, it wasn’t and isn’t hard to do.

  65. 65.

    debbie

    @geg6:

    MO picked the artist for her style and why anyone would expect a portrait not to be in that style is beyond me. This is reminiscent of the kerfuffle over the Vietnam Memorial when people were demanding realistic statues of soldiers instead of an objective statement about War.

  68. 68.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    I guess when Karl Rove developed his “permanent majority” strategy, he left out the bit about GOPers living on forever. Bastard!

  69. 69.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    As a general matter, it’s hard for individuals to go against their culture. Some do it, but with great angusih. And a few others do it easily and even relish it. When I said it was hard to do, I was speaking generally.

  70. 70.

    zhena gogolia

    @debbie:

    That analogy would work if the portrait were an abstract rather than looking like a fairly realistic portrait of Somebody, just not Michelle Obama. But obviously I just don’t get it. It looks like a fashion illustration to me.

  71. 71.

    Kay

    Trump finally gets flack for his inadequate and bungled response to a real threat:

    n previous years, the C.D.C. usually held autumn events to encourage flu shots. Led by the director, they could involve detailed discussion of the looming viral threat. Dr. Fitzgerald, new to office, did not hold one.
    Mr. Price’s tenure focused less on public health than on repealing the Affordable Care Act, a mission Mr. Trump demanded. “He better get the votes,” Mr. Trump told a crowd. “If he doesn’t, I’m going to say, ‘Tom, you’re fired!’”
    One day before he actually was fired — or at least forced out — Mr. Price spoke at a flu-related event and got his own shot in front of the audience. But by then, he had been under fire for three weeks over his travel, and the room was full of political reporters, who shouted questions as he fled, jacket still in hand.

    Governing is too boring for these celebrities.

    Also- they’re unqualified.

  72. 72.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Baud:

    Valentine’s shopping led me down a rabbit hole. I read the ads for the descriptions.

  74. 74.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Baud:

    As a general matter, it’s hard for individuals to go against their culture.

    True, but it happens. I, for example, am episcopalian but do not drink single malt scotch.

  77. 77.

    debbie

    @zhena gogolia:

    It’s not a literal analogy; it’s simply a general analogy. Also, she’s painting in the tradition of Gustav Klimt, Alphonse Mucha, and many others.

  79. 79.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: On your ETA, No, those of us in construction (which is the only blue collar cohort I will speak for) aren’t some great monolith. There is a significant percentage of the stupid (gun loving, racist, gay bashing, wimmen hating, knee jerk stupid) but I am far from alone in my liberal politics.

  80. 80.

    ThresherK

    @debbie: And now that memorial is recognised for the achievement it is. I’m sorta grateful the country got its collective act together about that. (Disclaimer: I registered for the draft way after that war.)

    The same for MO’s portrait happens, I hope.

  81. 81.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: Black Panther and Black Lightning were just members of the first wave of headlining black comics superheroes in the 1960s-70s; there’s something of a cultural lag in the naming because these are old comics characters. But even then, it was never a 100% thing.

  82. 82.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Baud: Played by Anthony Mackie in the recent Marvel movies. Introduced in the movies in one of the best of the MCU movies, Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

    In the comics, the first AA hero in the Big Two, introduced shortly after Black Panther.

    The “Black _______” pattern is something I associate more with DC than with Marvel (hence Black Lightning, a DC property). Marvel did it too, in the 1970s, but in the books I read it seemed mostly to be a way to differentiate between similar characters with related origins. (Goliath and Black Goliath operated as a team for a while.)

    Most of the ones Citizen Alan mentioned are 1980s characters, which was when the “Black _______” pattern started disappearing. That would be when Storm and Captain Marvel (Marvel) and Cyborg (DC) debuted. Some of the “Black _______” characters at Marvel retired, others took new names.

  85. 85.

    Sab

    @OzarkHillbilly: I am from a Management family and I am our first Democrat. My husband is a blue collar guy from a blue collar family. His father always told them ” You aren’t rich enough to be Republican.”

  86. 86.

    Kay

    Betsy DeVos is filming a tv special to celebrate her one year in office:

    The unannounced visit is part of a larger pattern for DeVos, who has been criticized for keeping many public appearances off her calendar. Critics say keeping plans private diminishes public trust and accountability.
    When Chalkbeat learned about DeVos’ visit to Cold Spring Friday, we reached out to the school and to DeVos’ spokesperson to confirm the details and find out why she was here. Neither responded for more than 72 hours.
    On Monday, DeVos’ spokesperson Liz Hill emailed an explanation for the visit.
    “She was there filming for an upcoming TV special on innovation in education and her one-year anniversary in office,” Hill wrote. “It was closed press and not noticed to the public for that reason.”

    If tv stations run this Trump campaign propaganda they should lose their license.

  89. 89.

    evodevo

    @Jeff: Yes. obama’s is OK, but Michelle’s doesn’t look like her, nor does it give me an overall impression of what she really is …a really extraordinary woman …it looks like a portrait of someone wearing a dress from the Sixties with no hint of the person I saw over the 8 years they were in the public eye.

  90. 90.

    Brachiator

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    But FIS spokesperson Jenny Wiedeke insisted that while conditions were tough they were also safe. “We know it was very difficult conditions for the riders,” she said. “Each rider had two opportunities to perform their run. Nobody is forced to go down and compete.”

    That comment is bound to provoke anger from the riders, who could hardly have expected to have pulled out of an Olympic final. In total there were only nine clean runs out of 52 in total with riders falling, face-planting or pulling up because they couldn’t build enough speed.

    Do I detect a whiff of misogyny?

    There’s a strong stench of many bad things.

    What’s the point of insisting that all is well when participants obviously are having problems completing clean runs?

    The lack of support for the athletes is appalling. You would think they might have learned something from recent scandals.

  92. 92.

    clay

    @Kay: Incompetent. Cruel. Secretive. Demands to be celebrated for mediocrity.

    I’ll say this for Devos… she is the PERFECT Trump nominee.

  95. 95.

    aimai

    @evodevo: I like that it reflects a very private, still, thoughtful person. Its the person underneath and behind the perfect form/perfectly chosen clothes, the all embracing always ready to engage mother. I like to think of it as the Michelle that Barack fell in love with–a striking, calm, majestic, dominant, presence who keeps her own counsel.

  96. 96.

    Baud

    Who does this remind you of?

    Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte should be taken seriously, but not literally, his spokesman said on Tuesday, after the controversial leader drew criticism for saying he once ordered soldiers to shoot female Maoist insurgents in the genitals.

  97. 97.

    Kay

    @JGreenDC
    Feb 11
    More
    In the Oval Office, Trump read a print-out of the Daily Mail story with incredulity… Trump said he was shocked that this clean-cut Harvard guy with the perfectly parted hair — “straight out of central casting” — could have violently attacked women.

    They’re just really shallow people. Easily impressed and very conventional. Well, one good thing came out of it. It’s now established fact that Kelly’s a liar too.

  99. 99.

    Brachiator

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    This morning, I got one for a line of extremely erotic lingerie (not quite to fetish wear, but going that direction), that line being “liked” by two women of my professional acquaintance.

    Kinda funny, but also a case where the algorithm has slipped into the inappropriate territory. Is there an easy way to turn this off?

  103. 103.

    NotMax

    @NotMax

    Saw that errant capital W just after pressing the button.

    A thousand pardons. Shall assuage my shame with a slice of chocolate sour cream cake baked the other day as a reward for mowing the whole property.

  104. 104.

    danielx

    @NotMax:

    ‘He thinks Jesus tells him to say things’

    And if Jesus told him so, then it must be okay – ‘it’ being whatever thought passes through his diseased mind.

  109. 109.

    TS

    @zhena gogolia:

    It looks like a fashion illustration to me.

    Which describes Michelle Obama – she illustrates her own fashion – no other FLOTUS has/had the style and the flair to wear it as did MO. The painting does this perfectly.

  111. 111.

    Kay

    I don’t know anything about art either- I might be actually bad at art- but I like the portraits for the reason AL said in the post- a big part of the Obama’s to me was there insistence that they would not be what people thought they should be.

    I think that’s part of WHY so many white people objected to them- because the ability to be what you are without apology is part of privilege. That’s where the charges of “arrogance” came from.

    Early in the primary campaign I read a New Yorker piece on Michelle Obama and she sort of wasn’t going along with the idea people might have a middle class Chicago black person. She was very much herself. I was impressed. I just got this powerful sense that she had spent her whole life having people say “you are THIS” and her saying “actually, no, I’m THIS”.

    There’s power in that and that’s why it’s reserved for people of privilege. Why wouldn’t Obama be the “leader” they all thought he should be? Because he’s not doing that. He’s going his own way. Trump feels entitled to this leeway- he is what he is and he doesn’t apologize, because he was born to it. The Obama’s insisted that they get it too.

  113. 113.

    maurinsky

    @Aimai:

    I had a similar thought – Michelle Obama radiates exuberant warmth and this color palette is so cool. I think it misses her energy.

  115. 115.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Most presidential portraits, even the “famous” ones, have a strong whiff of Sears Portrait Studio with a sidebar of Thomas Kinkade. They are not meant to inform, or to be a ‘true’ likeness of the president portrayed; they are meant to imitate/immortalize whatever the current power structure’s idea of Respectable Leadership looks like.

    They are supposed to be safe, not distract people, say nothing of the character of the figures portrayed, be non controversial so they can be hung in offices or used in advertisements for mattress sales in Feburary. In other words anti-art.

    And of course we have to look forward to the President Trump on black velvet.

  118. 118.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    hehe my one critic of the Obama portrait is wow they got his personality down pat, but the ivy background seems to done with another technique. But thinking it over I suspect the artist is saying Obama’s charisma is such that everything else around him seems less real lol

  119. 119.

    WaterGirl

    @rikyrah: You guys are all making me want to see Black Panther. Will it make sense to someone like me who doesn’t know any backstory?

    I never picked up a comic book as a kid, but I have been enjoying The Flash, Agents of Shield, Black Lightning, etc on TV. Without the backstories I may be like a stupid person who watches a show and misses half the references, but I’m okay with that. You have to start somewhere. But I don’t know if the same thing would be true for the upcoming movie.

  120. 120.

    WaterGirl

    @Schlemazel: How’s your eyesight? I ask because I need a stronger pair of glasses, so I don’t see the details in Michelle’s face, but without being able to see the detail I feel that the artist very much caught the grace and style and the arms of Michelle Obama.

  121. 121.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @NotMax: Pence does come across as just like as a more active Trump, but without the sex, charisma and a healthy does of Christian uncanny valley. As he is showing in the Winter Olympics Pence would try and fail at a lot of things I suspect.

  122. 122.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: So you started Black Lightning! Did you end up starting at the beginning? What do you think? I really like it.

  123. 123.

    mai naem mobile

    @Jeff: that’s exactly the way i feel. The facial likeness.isn’t there.
    I would have liked the artists to troll a little. Maybe have Barack Obama hold a Kenyan passport with his extra long fingers, ,maybe with a Kenyan birth certificate sticking out. And Michelle really should have been holding a videotape or cd clearly labeled “Classified – Top Secret:Hate Whitey Tape.”

  125. 125.

    WaterGirl

    @Kay: At a Michelle ampaign event here in Champaign in early 2007, she had her hair pinned back in a plain bun and wore no make-up. She didn’t have time for that. She’s a very genuine person.

  126. 126.

    Kay

    @WaterGirl:

    Well, if I understand it the whole thing of art is that it’s personal, so if they dislike the portraits the Obamas would certainly get that. That’s why we give artists kind of extra leeway- because it’s so brutal when people hate their stuff :)

  128. 128.

    Kay

    @WaterGirl:

    I saw this film about Bob Dylan once. So everyone had an idea about him, what he represents, what his songs mean, and he sort of deliberately (and almost cruelly) rejected that.

    It’s an expression of self. “I am NOT yours”

    To thine own self be true could be the Obama family motto.

  129. 129.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @WaterGirl: Interesting, I supose it could be argues the change in lighting and detail shows Obama transcending and focusing that, but it is clear that background is no accident.

  130. 130.

    clay

    @WaterGirl:

    You guys are all making me want to see Black Panther. Will it make sense to someone like me who doesn’t know any backstory?

    The Marvel movies all form a connected tapestry of sorts, but each entry is usually pretty self-contained with everything you need to know. Especially the ones that aren’t sequels, like this one. I think you’ll be fine.

    There isn’t much backstory for this movie, since it’s going to be introducing most of the characters and settings it uses. But here’s what you need to know: T’Challa (the lead character) first appeared on screen in Captain America: Civil War as the son of the king of Wakanda, a (fictional) African nation. Wakanda contains the world’s largest supply of vibranium, an ultra-rare and valuable metal. They’ve used this to make Wakanda the world’s richest and most technologically advanced nation.

    In Civil War, T’Challa’s father was assassinated, elevating him to the throne. T’Challa spent the remainder of that movie pursuing a revenge agenda, before realizing that revenge was not the same as justice, and was hollow. Civil War also introduced Martin Freeman’s character as a minor US government bureaucrat.

    The BP movie’s secondary antagonist, played by Andy Serkis, was introduced in a previous movie — Avengers: Age of Ultron. He was a smuggler who tried to get vibranium out of Wakanda. During the film (for unrelated reasons), he lost his arm.

    I think that’s about it. Enjoy!

  132. 132.

    Brachiator

    @WaterGirl:

    You guys are all making me want to see Black Panther. Will it make sense to someone like me who doesn’t know any backstory?

    I don’t know much about the back story. I don’t think it matters much, except to deep comic nerds. Some stuff in the trailers suggest there will be a little basic exposition for folks.

  133. 133.

    Brachiator

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Is there an easy way to turn this off?

    I believe that turning on is the point of erotic lingerie

    Ha!

    But usually it’s directed at a particular person, not a co-worker or the Internet.

    There’s probably a sitcom episode inspired by this, or soon will be.

  135. 135.

    Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot

    “Those Are A Couple of Very Fine Portraits”

    I don’t know, Barack’s is ok, but Michelle’s not so much. She’s a strong, brilliant, capable, accomplished black woman, and that dress does not do her justice, IMAO. Sleeveless is good, but then her arms are depicted as less muscular than they are (why do that?). And her distinctive jawline has been softened, not cool at all. Moving away from the typical Sears Portrait/Thomas Kinkade approach was a very good idea, I just don’t think it worked in Michelle’s case. Very small in the grand scheme, of course, but I think this was a swing and a miss.

  137. 137.

    pluky

    If the portraits get people engaged; discussing the technique, the subjects, and the interaction betwixt the two; they have succeeded. Love it or hate it; ’tis better than to just dismiss it.

Comments are closed.