Kill whitey?

More like "Kill all white women." But the painter who did those as well as the Obama portraits is an artiste, you pleb! She should be celebrated for the obvious brilliance! ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

She's a he and yes, he's explictly said that that painting is "about the kill whitey thing" (not exactly the most eloquent manifesto but it sure is a striking picture)

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

Yes, he's a he. And sometimes "art" is just stupid and stupidly done. Both factors appertain in the case of his Obama portraits as well as the decapitated white women thing.

Modern Art. Well, at least it's modern, that much we're sure of.

Eh, I've seen velvet Elvises at various flea markets that were done with better skill and emotional content. Maybe he should study the masterpieces produced by the poker playing dogs painter? LOL!

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

What snark? Serious question serious answer. If my emphasis irked you there's not much I can do about that - my point is that people's objections to this portrait (quality aside) seem to shift:
- it's not an appropriate presidential portrait!
What's an appropriate presidential portrait?
- well, it should be a formal portrait of course!
What's a formal portrait?
- a portrait that looks like what I think a presidential portrait should look like!

With your last post you effectively back filled some criteria but I'm not sure they hold up. Very few of the "traditional" portraits give any indication of the subject's office (GWB and Clinton are obvious exceptions and there are probably 5 others with hints but that's it). Several of the backgrounds are made-up / composite views of Washington (Truman, Harding especially) so the idea of using fantastic elements to speak to the subject's life is hardly new - to presidential portraits let alone portraits more generally. Arthur's has an entirely made-up vaguely Hellenic background and (and this doesn't appear in the online versions) had a fallen rosebud at his feet which was a joke on the part of the artist about the president's apparent devotion to high society.

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"Are you sure we're going fast enough?" - Emil Zatopek

You friggin' luddite!

I believe that this one says, "Justin Bieber sucks" and conveys a message of what we'd all like to see happen to his "music" catalog. The executioner in this painting is a feminine hero and should be elevated to sainthood.

The snark you've been throwing at anyone who displayed any criticism of these portraits the entire thread. Don't play dumb.

You'd have to be trying really damn hard not to see the obvious disparity between the Obamas' portraits and basically all of the ones that preceded them. The artists were specifically chosen because of their political and artistic styles.

In my opinion, the idea of these portraits is to create historical memorials to the subjects of the paintings to preserve their likenesses and legacies for future memory. The purpose is not to give artists an opportunity to make artistic or ideological statements. There's nothing at all wrong with artists doing that, but I would say that Presidential portraiture isn't the place for it.

Of course, this is personal opinion, as is most discussion about artistic endeavor.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Why is this just now occurring to me. Surely someone has noticed this already. B.Obama appears to be surrounded by -- or stuck in, what? A bush, or bushes. Is the message, "I could had done so much more if not for the plate handed to me by Bush."

Or more succinctly, the portrait is saying, "BUT BUSH."

Always blaming someone else.

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev

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It doesn't really matter what Phil is saying, the music of his voice is the appropriate soundtrack for a bicycle race. HTupolev