The Daily Telegraph featured a selection of bad paintings of Obama, taken from a site called badpaintingsofbarackobama.com.
Mexican Obama with taco and underpants?!?
Also noteworthy was the three-eyed Obama, and the Obama with a world on his forehead and blue veins everywhere. I really don’t know what it was all about.
13 Comments
These aren’t bad paintings.
You only say that because you’re a fascistconservativephilistine and fail to understand the Questions of Identity implied in the post-vectorian discursionary neo-heteromonial relations of flux.
Anything can be Art. To say otherwise is to support the Holocaust. I picked up a half a Quarter Pounder and put it in the gallery and only the fascists complained about the ants.
It’s ART and I got a ten thousand dollar grant to prove it.
Some of them aren’t bad tho’. That Boys II Men one however is a real good example of why skill doesn’t make you any good.
He sorta looks like Elvis.
The Boyz II Men one is awesome. It definitely has skill. Some of the others are quite well done too – just very odd – I’m really not sure what the imagery is all about. Then there’s the ones which make poor Obama look like his head has been distorted in horrible ways. It’s so hard to get people’s faces right. Really the artists should have traced a newspaper photograph then scaled it up on graph paper if they couldn’t do it by eye alone.
What’s with the undies? Whatever that artist is smoking, it must be good…
On a second inspection, I’m wondering if Obama’s actually wearing a taco on his head, or if it’s just a really bad sombrero. He does seem to be standing on tacos, however? And I’m really confused about the multi-coloured people in white underwear.
The point is not so much the quality of the paintings (some are rather good), but the mere fact that it can be done. It is a sign of democratic health that a President can be represented in all sorts of ways, some positive, some not … and, yes, some in caricature!
Eoin, indeed – it is a positive thing that people can draw the President however they want. Although I think most of the art was intended as a compliment, rather than a caricature (unlike the recent Cowen portrait!)
I am still trying to decipher (in between gulps of laughter) the symbolism of the tacos and the underpants.
Judging by your gravatar you have a thing about men in undies.
That’ll do, Mel.
It is a sign of democratic health that a President can be represented in all sorts of ways, some positive, some not … and, yes, some in caricature!
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True but given the Obama Industry and its plethora of Great Man Imagery standing in stark contrast to the fact he appears to have, for example, not changed US foreign policy at all; I’m afraid the Cult of the Personality is alive and well.
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That’s not a sign of a healthy democracy.
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Consider Bill Clinton. All these people who would say they hate Reagan but love Clinton appear not to realize that the reasons they hate Reagan – war on drugs, cuts to welfare, military chauvinism, what have you – are actually much better reasons to hate Clinton.
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He went much further than Reagan did.
Well all these paintings will certainly buy into the ‘Obama as fake messiah’ shtick that Republicans/right-wingers have been pushing – and serve to indicate that some of Barack’s supporters/idolisers are very, very, very weird indeed. Probably won’t win them next election though! Feeling intellectually and morally superior is one thing, but having an electoral superiority is another thing altogether.
PS Blue Obama ! Hallucinogenic Obama! And Third Eye Obama!
Ah, there it is – unicorn Obama.