Bad portraits of politicians

May 30th, 2010 - File under Blog - 20523 Comments;http%3A%2F%2Fwww.filibustercartoons.com%2Findex.php%2F2010%2F05%2F30%2Fbad-portraits-of-politicians%2FBad+portraits+of+politicians2010-05-30+07%3A49%3A05J.J.http%3A%2F%2Fwww.filibustercartoons.com%2F%3Fp%3D2052

Former prime minister Jean Chretien unveiled his official portrait in the House of Commons gallery earlier this week. And it was awful. See for yourself:

Like everything else in modern politics, the once-great art of political portraiture is becoming increasingly cheapened through a lack of maturity and respect. Official portraits are simply a lot worse today than they were in previous decades (to say nothing of previous centuries), and with each new unveiling we seem to be sliding further and further down the pole of what exactly constitutes tasteful political art.

A huge part of the problem is that the politicians themselves are now usually in charge of commissioning their own official portrait, unlike in previous eras where the job was outsourced to some government-funded archivist or interior decorator or whatever. When disinterred parties ran the show, we got some nice paintings. With the politicians in charge, however, portraits have (predictably) become a ever-more-grotesque exercise in over-the-top vanity and self-importance.

I’d say there are four main trends of awful political portraits in the 21st Century.

Trend number one is that which Chretien is guilty of: attention-seeking modernism. This is when the politician purposely commissions a portrait that ostentatiously rejects “the traditional conventions” of what we expect a political portrait to look like (ie; a photo-realistic depiction of a human in a pseudo-office setting), in favor of a more  faddish re-imagining. By making an aggressively “edgy” portrait the politician ensures that a) his very progressive interest in modern art will forever be known and applauded, and b) his portrait will forever stand out from (and thus draw attention away from) all the other uptight, unhip portraits hanging around him. By choosing a crazy neon yellow background, Chretien is basically screaming to all the bored, field-tripping schoolchildren of the future “Hey! Look at me! I was the prime minister wild enough to eschew centuries of convention! Love me!”

A particularly infamous example of this principle in practice was the case of Jerry Brown, the once, and perhaps future governor of California. Here’s the official portrait he commissioned:

Apparently the painting was so non-conformist (ie, hideous) the uptight folks at the California legislature refused to even hang it for many years. But it’s up now, and no doubt children will be excitedly pointing at it for millennia to come.

But that’s loopy California. Surely Britain, of all places, is immune to this sort of hippy-dippy stuff. Alas no. Most of the official portraits of the recent British prime ministers have been surprisingly new-agey. For example, the late Harold Wilson, and the equally late Edward Heath:

It particularly astonishes me that Heath, the great dean of British conservatism, would approve such a monstrously unconservative painting. But I guess it’s more important to be noticed than consistent. (Thatcher, to her credit, did get a portrait as square as she was).

Crime number two concerns too much junk and symbolism. This is basically the high school grad photo shoot approach to portraiture. The objective is to jam as many trinkets and baubles representing as many of your interests, hobbies, and passions as possible into the frame so everyone will be able to appreciate what a cool and unique person you are.

Here’s the official portrait of Kim Campbell, one of Canada’s most inconsequential prime ministers:

So we have Ms. Campbell, sitting there and looking pensive. But then we also have this giant aboriginal blanket thing in the background, highlighting the fact that she hails from coastal British Columbia, where such art is common. And she’s leaning on some judicial robes, symbolizing the fact that she was justice minister at one time. And, even though they blend in with the native blanket, you can also see that she has her academic gown hanging up there in the background, as well, symbolizing the fact that she… uh, graduated from university, I guess. It’s pretty much her entire resume on canvas.

An even more hideous abomination of over-sharing is (perhaps predictably) Jesse Ventura’s gubernatorial portrait:

Here’s the official press release writeup that accompanied the unveiling:

Gov. Ventura is pictured standing proudly over a landscape filled with symbols of Minnesota and important aspects of his life and career. A dark sky highlights his strong, determined face. He is dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and red-white-and-blue tie. On his lapel are a Navy Seal team pin and Navy jump wings, and in his hand is one of the fine cigars he relishes, this time clearly lit as was not always the case as he went about the State Capitol during his years as governor.

Blended into the landscape behind him are images of an undeveloped, wild Minnesota to his left, and to his right the Capitol building, the Minneapolis skyline, a bridge spanning the Mississippi River, a lush Minnesota golf course and a light-rail train. The governor’s right hand rests on a figure representing “The Thinker,” an image used in his campaign for office that contrasted his reputation as “Jesse, the Body,” with “Jesse, the Thinker.”

So, by my count, the portrait contains no less than 12 different symbols, allusions, metaphors, and heirlooms to help encapsulate the full majesty of Governor Ventura’s life.

It’s easy to merely dismiss portraits of this sort as trite and cheesy, but upon deeper reflection they also reek of insecurity in a fairly creepy way. To cram so much of your life and identity into a single, publicly-displayed painting is to demand recognition and approval for the entirety of your existence, which can often be a sign that the entirety of your existence wasn’t all that impressive to begin with. Like, say, if you were an unpopular one-term governor of Minnesota, or suffered the largest landslide defeat in Canadian parliamentary history.

Bad portrait hallmark number three takes the form of extremely forced fantasy folksiness, or “EFFF.”

Look, if you were president or governor or premier or whatever, you spent a lot of time sitting behind a  big oak desk wearing a tie. Let’s not pretend otherwise. I very much doubt Governor Judd Gregg of New Hampshire spent many of his days doing this, for instance:

Or that this is what Howard Dean looked like when he was governing Vermont:

This kind of thing strikes me as extraordinarily patronizing to the voters. I guess we’re supposed to forget what politicians actually are, or something, and confuse them with L.L. Bean models. Or maybe the politicians have just decided to take open advantage of the fact that they have an artist at their disposal and plunge into full-on fantasy. Future portraits depicting governors as unicorn-riding robocops cannot be ruled out at this point.

Atrocious trend number four- portraits within portraits. Politicians these days care so damn much about projecting a “happy family” image that they will now actively insist that their official portraits contain depictions of other portraits — usually of all their motley family members. Take Jeb Bush’s portrait, for instance:

So the artist not only had to draw Jeb, he is now expected to draw all of Jeb’s sisters and cousins and aunts too. Yeah, I’m sure that’s what he signed up to do.

And here’s Mitt Romney:

Romney’s portrait is really quite awful on a number of fronts. Not only does it contain an incredibly awkward sub-picture of his wife (who, as First Lady of Massachutes already gets to commission her own friggin portrait anyway) but it also depicts him sitting on his desk, one of the most common faux-casual portrait crimes against humanity. (A related fun side-note is that the desk is also depicted with a copy of the governor’s now infamous Obamacare-style health care bill on it. Which just goes to show that cramming your portrait full of myopic props isn’t always as politically helpful as one might assume).

Special notice should also be given to this extremely tacky portrait of the former lieutenant-governor of Alberta, Norman Kwong, which, in addition to decorating him like a Christmas tree with each and every one of his ex-officio medals of office, features an enormous portrait of himself in his football days, lest anyone forget that he used to play for the Edmonton Eskimos.

Personally, I find the whole portrait-within-a-portrait thing gives off a creepy MC Escher vibe. Or maybe just a Stephen Colbert vibe. Either way, where does it stop? What if Norman Kwong’s son became lieutenant-governor some day, and wanted his portrait to contain his father’s portrait which in turn contained another portrait? The schoolchildren on the field trips would weep with head pains!

In conclusion, here is a good political portrait. It is the official portrait of Winston Churchill that hangs in Number 10 Downing Street, painted by Frank O. Salisbury.

As you can see, Churchill is just standing there, wearing what he usually wore, looking like he usually looked. He’s holding a book that is just a book, not one of his history anthologies, not his favorite childhood volume of the Hardy Boys. There is no big portrait of Clementine Churchill on the wall, nor is he is he tromping around in rain boots on the river bank with angry bats symbolizing the Nazis fluttering about overhead. There’s not even a British flag. Churchill (if he was even in charge of commissioning this portrait, which he probably wasn’t) didn’t go for any of that crap, because he probably assumed that his accomplishments would stand for themselves, and that future generations would recognize him because he was an important guy worth recognizing.

Today’s insecure politicians can’t take that sort of thing for granted anymore. They want to rule as blandly and inoffensively as possible, yet still expect to be glorified as visionary statesmen when their careers conclude. The end result is the cornball junk you see above, where phony legacies and staged interestingness are depicted in oil to substitute for all that was lacking in the flesh.

One can only imagine the sheer horror that will be Sarah Palin’s official portrait.