Former President George W. Bush has opted for an unusual way to spend his retirement, learning to paint. “Painting has changed my life,” he revealed to ABC's Diane Sawyer.
In a violation nearly as valuable as Max Brod's publication of Franz Kafka's work against his will, a hacker accessed Bush's sister's email account, liberating two Bush pieces.
We break down the first of the two works. First of all, naked president. Alright. Wow. Naked-a** president.
The other painting is also a kinky bathroom selfie too, in the tub instead of the shower. One is immediately led to considerations of cleansing. I know it seems too easy, too armchair psychologist-y, but might a president charged with some of the worst atrocities and war crimes of the modern era find himself consumed by a desire to cleanse himself, like Lady Macbeth? Though, of course, this is also a president who cited Kanye West's attack on him the worst moment of his presidency, so that theory may be giving him too much credit.
Let's try to peel our eyes off all that Presidential flesh and take a closer look at the painting. The figure appears to be standing only mere inches from the tiled wall, standing erect and staring at the wall as though entirely uninterested in taking a shower. OK, so one might opt for generosity of a sort and offer that this strange appearance is a function of the former president's inexperience with painting. But, in a way, every painter is inexperienced; art is always attempt, essay. I can only respond to what I'm looking at. And the figure's nose might very well be touching the water-slicked tile.
More about the painting attests to conscious decision, rather than inexperience, affecting the image: the figure is completely outside of the shower's spray, as the vertical path of the water is uninterrupted by our supposed showerer. That's a conscious (or un-?) decision to place the “showerer” in a decidedly non-shower-taking position. In any case, it's not a matter lack of technique. It's a compositional consideration, made in the quiet of the blank canvas, that can't be said to reflect technical deficiencies.
The mirror. The figure is, in fact, so far aside and so close to the wall (is he even touching/leaning against it?) that the mirror's reflective angles are clearly impossible, strangely disembodying the face framed in the tiny mirror. The face in the mirror is even half of a head higher than the body from which it's supposedly reflected. The laws of optical physics do not apply in this bathroom. This is due as much to the placement of the figure to the far right of the shower as it is to the figure's bizarre proximity to the tile wall. In fact, the self-portraiture might be confined to only the face in the mirror, as it stares directly at the viewer/painter with its indecipherable (and yet distinctly lonely) countenance. That is, only the tightly circumscribed face is the self portrait: the body, with its rigid lifelessness, is someone, or something, else.