Obama Portraits Blend Paint and Politics, and Fact and Fiction
- 6 years ago
Obama Portraits Blend Paint and Politics, and Fact and Fiction
WASHINGTON — With the unveiling here Monday at the National Portrait Gallery of the official presidential likenesses of Barack Obama
and the former first lady, Michelle Obama, this city of myriad monuments gets a couple of new ones, each radiating, in its different way, gravitas (his) and glam (hers).
In an imposingly scaled painting — just over seven feet tall — the artist presents Mr. Obama dressed in the regulation black suit
and an open-necked white shirt, and seated on a vaguely thronelike chair not so different from the one seen in Stuart’s Washington portrait.
On several levels, then, the Obama portraits stand out in this institutional context, though given the tone of bland propriety
that prevails in the museum’s long-term “America’s Presidents” display — where Mr. Obama’s (though not Mrs. Obama’s) portrait hangs — standing out is not all that hard to do.
The painters they’ve picked to portray them — Kehinde Wiley, for Mr. Obama’s portrait; Amy Sherald, for Mrs. Obama — are African-American as well.
Mr. Wiley has set Mr. Obama against — really embedded him in — a bower of what looks like ground cover.
Some of the earliest presidents represented — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson
— were slaveholders; Mrs. Obama’s great-great grandparents were slaves.
[Read our interview Kehinde Wiley | Read our interview with Amy Sherald]
It doesn’t take #BlackLivesMatter consciousness to see the significance of this
racial lineup within the national story as told by the Portrait Gallery.
Mrs. Obama’s choice of Ms. Sherald as an artist was an enterprising one.
WASHINGTON — With the unveiling here Monday at the National Portrait Gallery of the official presidential likenesses of Barack Obama
and the former first lady, Michelle Obama, this city of myriad monuments gets a couple of new ones, each radiating, in its different way, gravitas (his) and glam (hers).
In an imposingly scaled painting — just over seven feet tall — the artist presents Mr. Obama dressed in the regulation black suit
and an open-necked white shirt, and seated on a vaguely thronelike chair not so different from the one seen in Stuart’s Washington portrait.
On several levels, then, the Obama portraits stand out in this institutional context, though given the tone of bland propriety
that prevails in the museum’s long-term “America’s Presidents” display — where Mr. Obama’s (though not Mrs. Obama’s) portrait hangs — standing out is not all that hard to do.
The painters they’ve picked to portray them — Kehinde Wiley, for Mr. Obama’s portrait; Amy Sherald, for Mrs. Obama — are African-American as well.
Mr. Wiley has set Mr. Obama against — really embedded him in — a bower of what looks like ground cover.
Some of the earliest presidents represented — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson
— were slaveholders; Mrs. Obama’s great-great grandparents were slaves.
[Read our interview Kehinde Wiley | Read our interview with Amy Sherald]
It doesn’t take #BlackLivesMatter consciousness to see the significance of this
racial lineup within the national story as told by the Portrait Gallery.
Mrs. Obama’s choice of Ms. Sherald as an artist was an enterprising one.