“Obama’s chair bears a certain resemblance to the chair in Gilbert Stuart’s iconic portrait of George Washington, as Holland Cotter pointed out at the New York Times, and his hunched-over, thoughtful pose echoes the lines of Rodin’s Thinker.”
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/2/12/17003956/obama-portraits-official-barack-michelle-kehinde-wiley-amy-sherald
If it is just a chair, it is a pretty much garage-sale worthy chair. 
I’m reminded today why Thomas Kincaide was so commercially successful.
So now folks want to complain about the chair?! 8-|
Hate Kincaide. Hate the chair, too. Love IRL Obamas. Carry on.
If that chair is indeed symbolic, it gets a pass. Otherwise, it is just an ugly chair exiled to die in the garden by the back, overgrown hedge.
I saw that Vox article, but I think claiming a resemblance is a stretch.
And I think it’s an even bigger stretch to say his pose “echoes” The Thinker. I don’t see it. The arms are different, the legs are different, the head position is different, the body position is different.
I never associated chrysanthemums with Chicago (I guess it’s the official flower if Chicago?) but the ivy wall is right out of Wrigley Field. Even I got that one.
I’m kind of amused by how many photos of Michelle Obama don’t look like what I think she looks like either.
More comments by art experts.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2018/02/12/those-interesting-new-obama-portraits-explained/ITahnSaWgBBoox9tsd2WqL/story.html
As far as the look on Michelle’s face in the portrait, if I had to put up with what she put up with in terms of bigoted criticism for 8 years, I wouldn’t be smiling either.
Every work of art should stand on it’s own. It’s nice to know that chrysanthemums are the official flower of Chicago, but that should only add a little spice for a viewer who knows that.
I think especially the MO portrait seems to need some sort of knowledge of the artist and her style to be appreciated. That’s a flaw, IMO. The art work should speak to us without that knowledge. She may have reasons for painting AA women with gray skin, but it seems stylized to me.
I saw a wonderful portrait of BO last winter by Robert Longo. It is called “Obama leaving” and shows him walking near a helicopter with secret service agents under a threatening sky. Its huge, and surprisingly, it’s a charcoal drawing. If you get a chance to see the show “Proof”, which is about to open in San Francisco, please go! It’s not even the best piece there but I found I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“especially the MO portrait seems to need some sort of knowledge of the artist and her style to be appreciated. That’s a flaw, IMO. The art work should speak to us without that knowledge.”
True… I didn’t think of it that way, but I think you’re right.
And yes, “Obama leaving” is powerful - thanks for sharing.
As far as Michelle’s gray skintone in the portrait, I’ve read several places that Sherald intentionally uses the gray in her portraits of African Americans because it is a mix of black and white and speak to there being no true black and white. Here’s a quote from one mention of it in the NYT:
“Sherald uses grisaille — a method of painting in gray monochrome — for her subjects’ skin. Because her gradations slyly allude to the mixed and often unacknowledged backgrounds of African-Americans, Sherald’s paintings make an important statement about our racial history.”
@greenwitch Thank you for posting the Obama photo - very powerful and unsettling.
I’ve changed my mind several times already about the Obama portraits. At first, I hated Michelle’s portrait. I still don’t like the gray skin, but I no longer think that the face doesn’t look like her. I’ve seen several pictures of the photo, and there’s quite a bit of variation. Some reproductions look much more washed out than others. I saw one where the background was a vivid turquoise rather than a washed-out blue, and in that one I saw more expression in the face (I’m assuming that this was a more faithful depiction of the portrait). The expression was enigmatic, and as I looked at it I was reminded of several incidents in Michelle’s life. When she went to Princeton, one of her roommate’s mother immediately went to the dean and demanded a different room assignment for her daughter. She was refused, and she considered pulling her daughter from Princeton. It makes me sad to think of a 17- or 18-year-old, from a lower-middle-class neighborhood in Chicago, having made it to Princeton only to be subjected to this. I also remembered the first televised speech that MO gave, early in the primaries, before she was turned into Jackie Kennedy. Her speech was powerful and moving, and I made my first contribution to the Obama campaign that night. She was wearing a simple cotton flowered blouse, and her hair was in tiny braids. Soon after that, her hair was straightened and she wore designer sheaths. I still feel sad that she had to be made over in order to be acceptable. And people still found her terrifying - the terrorist fist bump comes to mind. She endured vicious criticism throughout the White House years and, much worse, constant fear about her husband’s safety and, perhaps, her daughters’ safety. When I look at the portrait, her face says to me, You don’t own me. I see some defiance in her face. And power in her body.
Initially, I liked BO’s portrait more, but now I really dislike it. What bothers me the most is the expression on his face. He looks like a tough guy, and his features are distorted. He doesn’t look like the elegant, cerebral man with the huge grin, the man who bowed down so that a little boy could feel his hair, who delighted in children and who cried when his daughter went to college. I realize that these aspects of Obama are personal, and not about his presidency, but I don’t the expression on his face reflects the president he was, either.
It bothers me that the stylistic quirks of the artists (the huge hands on BO and the foliage, the gray skin on MO) are front and center. The portraits should be about the subjects, not about the artists.
But we are certainly talking about the portraits, and I am now interested in seeing more of the artists’ work.
The less traditional setting is fine. They just aren’t good. The one of Michelle doesn’t even look like Michelle.
For those who are interested in the artist who painted Barack Obama’s portrait, here’s a link to a 2014 PBS documentary Kehinde Wiley: An Economy of Grace
http://www.pbs.org/video/kehinde-wiley-economy-grace-full-episode/
Thanks for sharing the link, @katliamom. Excellent watch. Whether you lIke Wiley’s Obama portrait or are critical of it or of Wiley as the chosen artist, I recommend you take the time to watch the video. It touches upon many things raised on this thread.
It also speaks to this point made by @jollymama:
“Let’s not forget that Kehinde Wiley studied at Yale and is steeped in art history. Nothing he’s doing is by accident.”
Watching the artist’s process and learning more about him was intriguing and insightful even away from what it tells about this one artist.
“the ivy wall is right out of Wrigley Field. Even I got that one.”
There’s some controversy over whether that’s true since he’s a Sox fan apparently. But I can believe it, because the the artist said he used flowers and greenery from Illinois, Kenya and Hawaii to chart Obama’s path on earth through those plants that weave their way to the foreground. Maybe he thought the Ivy covered wall was appropriate because it fit with his style to use greenery in his backgrounds - and is in Chicago, just in the wrong field.
Scroll down in this article to see how similar the ivy on the wall looks to the painting ;). It’s hilarious.
Wiley has used similar backgrounds in previous paintings. The Wrigley Field thing is a meme joke, folks. Funny but not to be taken seriously.
Maybe the Ivy refers to the Ivy League.
I don’t see how that can be right. We can’t experience art without bringing our lives, our culture and our knowledge to it. We can never look at a painting in a vacuum.
Just for example, you’d experience the Barack Obama portrait differently
- if you didn’t know Barack Obama had been President, and instead thought this was a picture of some random guy
- if you didn’t know standard America clothing conventions, and you thought this was a picture of a man in sleepwear
- if you didn’t have any idea what previous Presidential portraits looked like
Everyone brings different things to a viewing of a painting, but nobody brings nothing.
Well that’s just an art thing @doschicos. Art people like to ponder the meaning of art. And boy, are people pondering the symbolism in this piece! I read an article today that stated that one could look at it as Obama with the “Bushes behind him.” I don’t think anyone should be told their ideas and opinions on something so subjective shouldn’t be taken seriously.
That being said, since I like plants, I looked up the species of ivy that is on the walls of Wrigley field. It’s Boston Ivy which has simple (single leaf on the stem) palmate leaves with three lobes (looks kind of like a maple leaf). The ivy in the portrait has compound leaves - or the leaf is made up of several “leaflets” - in this case, mostly five. I did a search and couldn’t find anything that stated what species of plant is really is - maybe Wiley just took artistic license and didn’t paint any particular species. Some of his pieces have realistic foliage in the background (one kind of looks like grape leaves) and others have more abstract greenery. So who knows?
Also, Boston Ivy is native to China and Japan, so that doesn’t fit with the foliage being symbolic of Obama’s history.
So yeah, most likely not Wrigley field, but it’s fun to think about it instead of just looking at it and immediately forming an “I like it or don’t like it” opinion based only on whether it’s visually appealing to you.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, @LeastComplicated, and your ivy research.
Great art - painting, book, movie - makes you think.
I read (can’t remember where now exactly) that the artist commented on the greenery representing life and vibrancy.
If nothing else, these paintings will make folks think about many things much more than previous presidential portraits, not just the subject matter but the artist and just art and art history as a whole - it already has.