Photo Bomb
The paintings of George W. Bush are as historically important as his written memoirs of his administration.
It's unfortunate that he has been taking master classes from an art teacher. He doesn't need help. He is the consummate amateur artist. The difference between the amateur, and the academically trained artist (which is not reversible), is that the amateur artist can be trained to be an academic artist, while the academically trained artist cannot, by any means, become an amateur artist.
The French have a phrase, violon d’Ingres, meaning a cultured hobby. It refers to the passion the French painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres had for playing the violin. Art was his calling, not playing the violin, but every genius must be forgiven an idiosyncrasy.
Former President George W. Bush is chided for being the ultimate political insider because his father was, as he was, President of the United States. At the same time, art insiders snub his paintings for the opposite reason. That's a double standard right there! Anyway, it doesn't stop him from doing what he wants to do.
Notice that his paintings of world leaders do not flatter -even as they offer little of the psychological insight we have come to expect from masters. He worked hard to bring those paintings to completion. What that tells me is he worked quite as hard to meet the world leaders he met with as President of the United States.
Paintings, like diplomatic summits, don't just happen. Both are hard work. The job of President of the United States is too demanding for any man -for any human being. All Presidents have stumbled, in one way or other, and with George W. Bush humanity manifested as a weakness for painting. He always wanted to be an artist.
It is an annoying quirk of news media that a story about a well-known public official, one known to everyone, everywhere, invariably includes a perfunctory file photograph of the individual. Not placed at the end of the story, as a footnote, but (as if the reader had been born yesterday) at the top, just beneath the headline, so that the reader must glance at the picture in order to read the story. Do I repeat myself it is the same file photo every time?
Andy Warhol, as other artists of his generation, addressed the serial redundancy of images from advertising and news media in Pop Art. It grated on his nerves as it grates on everybody's nerves. Sooner or later there was bound to be a reaction against so much repetition. If you don't like Pop Art, at least realize that Andy Warhol positively hated it.
Like a neurosis, I struggled long and hard with abstraction, until one day, as I was reading the newspaper, a certain image caught my eye. It was a man with downcast looks, not flattering, but very good photojournalism. He looked so sad that I found myself feeling sorry for him, even before reading what he had done wrong to look repentant.
The photo accompanying the article stole the show, so to speak. I didn't have to read the story. I could see it all. That's photojournalism at its best. Photos like it are not a common occurrence. It will never be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. It's not that pretentious. It is an instance of photography at its finest, a once-in-a-lifetime, “decisive moment.”
I made an immediate pencil sketch of the news photo, on notepad, always at hand. My sketch had the same, sad effect on me as the photo. What both conveyed was feeling, not the photographer's, or the artist's feeling, but the emotion of the subject, the subject's feelings.
Incidentally, what about the anonymous photojournalist, not to mention the editor, what about their feelings? Alas, it is the fate of those who operate behind the scenes, who “keep to the background,” to remain anonymous. As far as questions of intellectual property, my sketch is entirely mine, no attribution or citation required. Contact my manager for permission to reprint.
I filled notebooks with sketches drawn from “decisive moments” in the news, reading, and registering, in the back of my mind, the emotional factor as told by the whole report. I sketched subjects for whom I felt nothing but hatred, as well as those for whom I had the utmost sympathy, and like a savant of body language, displayed them emotionally naked in my sketches.
I practice this in my current artwork, paintings. Painting is much more work than sketches, while brevity, like wit, is the essence of sketching. It's impossible to make a quick painting, a decisive moment, unlike a quick sketch. Every painting has its moment. It is always a surprise to the artist, and if it's not promptly recognized, and the moment seized, it's gone forever.
I must admit I don't handle my own work well, emotionally. I have destroyed most of what I have done for failing my own criteria. Painting, for me, is engaging. The paintings marked for destruction object. They will not be denied! They cry out for mercy, saying “spare me,” but I am relentless. Only emotionally temperate paintings will I permit to be seen, that repose, be tranquil, give lasting peace.
The graphic art of Brian Higgins can be viewed at: https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/8-brian-higgins
One-of-a-kind works of art can be viewed at: https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/1840403