My EYES!

[Octafish]

101. Art that Tells Us Nothing at All

George W Bush's portraits of world leaders: art that tells us nothing at all

Presidential library in Dallas exhibits two dozen paintings that are vacant, stubborn and servile – precisely what Bush intended

Jason Farago in New York
The Guardian, Friday 4 April 2014

Many good artists do bad things. Cellini and Caravaggio were both murderers; Schiele and Balthus had a thing for young girls; and more than one contemporary artist I could name has been tied up with tax evasion troubles. So just because a painter has – for example – the blood of up to 136,012 dead Iraqis on his hands does not, in itself, prove that he lacks talent.

George W Bush, whose nightmare presidency unleashed its latest aftershock this week when his dauphin John Roberts gutted our already minimal campaign finance laws, has been painting these past few years, and at his presidential library in Dallas he is exhibiting two dozen portraits of fellow world leaders. The show opens Saturday, and it has a title: The Art of Leadership: A President’s Personal Diplomacy.

“Diplomatic” is actually not a bad word to describe the orientation of these paintings. They are not bad so much as cautious, vacant, even servile – paintings by an artist anxious, or perhaps incapable, of doing anything that might leave a mark.

A responsible art critic, I should say at the start, does not review a show without seeing it, still less solely from stills taken from a hagiographic embarrassment of a Today show interview conducted by the artist’s daughter. (That is some serious media control: interviewed by your own child in your own library on a topic of your own choosing.) But with Bush, who famously made some of the worst decisions of any president since Reconstruction based on his “gut feeling”, an exception is in order. It’s hard to imagine that his portraits, with their notably flat composition and thin brushwork, gain much from being seen in situ.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/apr/04/george-bush-portraits-world-leaders

PS: Thank you, Whisp. Your review of the show and analysis of the interview and its subject are spot-on. I've always felt sorry for the women in the Bush family. Their expressions often are very revealing.