{"id":8327,"date":"2018-02-13T12:23:19","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T18:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=8327"},"modified":"2018-02-13T10:50:06","modified_gmt":"2018-02-13T16:50:06","slug":"twitter-feed-3-obama-portraits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/02\/twitter-feed-3-obama-portraits.html","title":{"rendered":"From the twitter feed, #3, the Obama portraits"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

CNN reported<\/a>\u00a0on the Obama portrait unveiling yesterday, but it\u2019s not yet available in the public domain so the image above is from the Bush portrait unveiling.<\/p>\n

Instead, I can only offer that you look at the link above and promise that I\u2019ll update the placeholder images below when available.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

My reaction to President Obama\u2019s picture:\u00a0 it\u2019s OK, I guess.\u00a0 I know that it\u2019s the style of the artist,\u00a0Kehinde Wiley, to depict \u201cAfrican-Americans posed in the style of Old Master paintings, regal, formal and filled with pops of color,\u201d as CNN phrases it, and this is in that style, so it\u2019s not a surprise.\u00a0 The portrait does look like Obama, and, really, the only odd thing about it, to my eye, aside from the question of what you think of the style, is that Obama and the chair he\u2019s sitting in appear to be superimposed on top of the background, rather than it looking natural.\u00a0 And, again, it\u2019s a part of the artist\u2019s style, but in other images one can find online, it looks more deliberately so, where here it looks a bit more like it was supposed to be integrated in more naturally but it didn\u2019t work out.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

As to Michelle Obama\u2019s picture, well, here\u2019s CNN\u2019s description:<\/p>\n

Michelle Obama chose Baltimore-based artist Amy Sherald. Sherald is another African-American artist known for her unique style, and her portraits also tend to underscore themes of social justice. She often paints black skin tones in gray as a way to take away the assigned \u201ccolor\u201d of her subjects. Sherald\u2019s work is less about realism in composition and more about shape and color; like Wiley, the choice of Sherald ushers in a new era of presidential portrait.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And it does look interesting, though the grey skin, however much it has a political message behind it, is visually unappealing, and the schoolchildren who Michelle said she hopes are inspired, aren\u2019t going to understand its purpose.\u00a0 What\u2019s more unsettling, though, is that the image just doesn\u2019t look like Michelle Obama, but like a generic idealized American black woman.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s just me (I stink at faces and totally identify with people who say they have \u201cface blindness\u201d though I\u2019m sure that I wouldn\u2019t meet the clinical definition) but it just feels \u201coff\u201d \u2014 and I don\u2019t mean this in the way that people meanspiritedly criticize her for scowling.\u00a0 It reminds me of the time I took an art class in the evenings and we worked on making portraits from photographs using grids, and I came up with something that looked reasonably like a real person \u2014 just not the person it was supposed to be.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be the first to admit that I don\u2019t have an eye for this sort of thing, and I am not going to criticize the Obamas for choosing artists who would render the portraits in a more \u201cartsy\u201d style rather than a conventional portrait.\u00a0 And if you look at Clinton\u2019s portrait online<\/a> it\u2019s clear that not all presidents have chosen traditional portraits.\u00a0 And perhaps there\u2019s an intent here, that the Obamas wanted to highlight artistic styles and artists rather than themselves, specifically.<\/p>\n

So, as usual, readers, what do you think?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0\u00a0President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama host a ceremony on the occasion of the unveiling of the official portraits of former President George W. Bush and former First Lady Laura Bush, in the East Room of the White House, May 31, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson); https:\/\/obamawhitehouse.archives.gov\/blog\/2012\/05\/31\/president-obama-unveils-official-portrait-president-george-w-bush<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNN reported\u00a0on the Obama portrait unveiling yesterday, but it\u2019s not yet available in the public domain so the image above is from the Bush portrait unveiling. Instead, I can only offer that you look at the link above and promise that I\u2019ll update the placeholder images below when available. My reaction to President Obama\u2019s picture:\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":8333,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[392,875,5],"class_list":["post-8327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art","tag-national-portrait-gallery","tag-obama"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom the twitter feed, #3, the Obama portraits<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"CNN reported\u00a0on the Obama portrait unveiling yesterday, but it's not yet available in the public domain so the image above is from the Bush portrait\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/02\/twitter-feed-3-obama-portraits.html\" \/>\n<meta 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