Presidential paintings

Who can say that this portrait of Mr Putin is not without insight? Look at that right eye. 

Over the last week it has emerged that former US President, George W. Bush has been dabbling in portrait painting. Samples of his work have been appearing on news services, generally being treated as a novelty story. Left-wing news services and their seemingly endless parade of professional "commentators" and "experts" have been trying to make mileage from it, with article after article condemning his work as unsophisticated and banal. For the Left, of course, Bush is an object of enduring hatred and ridicule - how easy then to tip buckets of bile upon his admittedly amateur art work. As if pre-programmed, social media chimed in too, with streams of vicious abuse, mockery and derision punctuating the usual treadmill of Save-the-World "memes" and pictures of cats. 

Once more I find myself out of phase. Not because I am in any way of fan of Mr Bush - I'm not. And not because I am or ever was a supporter of the Iraq war or any other policy or action of the United States during his presidency. As a matter of fact, I regard the invasion of Iraq as a crime and the conduct of the war that followed an even greater crime. But, to be perfectly objective about it, I don't mind the paintings. I disagree with the Leftist reviews I have read which describe them as inept, childish, lacking in insight or just plain embarrassing. Such reviews, I feel, have taken the paintings as an excuse to take cheap shots at an unpopular President. There's the usual smug self-righteousness and elitism that is so characteristic of leftist intellectuals, but there is very little real engagement with the paintings themselves. Nearly all critics I've read have not been able to distance themselves from their feelings about the painter. In a case like this, though, that is the first thing any critic or reviewer must do. 

They are not great paintings, but frankly, they are not bad, and they are considerably better than I would have guessed. Mr Bush reports that he has only been painting for two years. "Yes, it shows!" one critic ranted. I am less unkind. I think that for someone who has been painting for such a short period of time, and taking up a brush late in life, they show considerable talent. I sometimes venture down to the local Easter Art show, or a YMCA painting exhibition, and by any measure the paintings of Mr Bush are better than most amateur efforts. They are not without insight, or humour, and his self-portraits in the bathtub reveal a streak of self-mockery that I find endearing and refreshing. He is not a man who takes himself too seriously. His detractors will say he is an imbecile, but the naivety in his paintings is genuine. He is not pretentious. (Compare this to 99% of contemporary art!) 

I, at least, am quite capable of appreciating these paintings independent of my views about the Bush presidency, and I think they are not without virtue. I do not feel any compulsion to be snide and bitter and cheap about them, anyway. Some of them are quite interesting. I like their flatness and - to use a word that Bush himself used in reference to them - their "joy". What makes them interesting is a type of celebratory innocence, devoid of any attempt to psychologize the subject. He's obviously not a deep man, Mr Bush; he quietly celebrates ordinariness and the way the ordinary man refrains from being judgmental. This homely lack of pretentiousness is probably the quality that accounts most for his electoral popularity amongst Americans. These are not intellectual paintings, that is to say, but nor are they anti-intellectual. They are just what they are - an ordinary vision free of cant. The idea of painting a series of portraits of the world leaders he encountered while President is quite legitimate, an unaffected inspiration. 

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Some news reports feel it necessary to compare Mr Bush with that other notable leader/artist Winston Churchill. In one particularly spiteful, paranoid and idiotic article the writer suggested that both men had deliberately turned to painting as a way of "softening" their evil image, as if painting was something they took up on recommendation from the Ministry of Propaganda, rather than being just an innocent pastime. I don't find it a revealing comparison, but while we're at it, let me say that Churchill was, in fact, a very good painter, a serious painter. Bush will never be that, but he is not, at least, awful. Here below are two paintings by Churchill. See! He was a very good painter, a worthy member of an English (orientalist) tradition. Mr Bush's paintings are not nearly as accomplished, but they are not deserving of the scorn and contempt that has been heaped upon them. The inability of "progressive" commentators to put aside their loathing for the ex-President and to consider the paintings as paintings (albeit amateur paintings) is really quite juvenile but not unexpected. Hatred is a stain. The real objection from most Leftist commentators has been that these paintings might help humanize Mr Bush after the Left have spent so long and worked so hard demonizing him. Well, that's just the nature of art.