President Obama’s Official Presidential Portrait: A Transformative Moment
By Nadine Bouler
There is a well-worn cliche that a picture paints a thousand words, but can that image inspire the mindset of future generations? Presidential portraiture not only attempts to articulate the tenure of an individual president, but also shapes the legacy of a nation as a whole.
Presidential portraits making history
The significance of American presidential portraiture lies in its function. As a young nation, the United States’ early presidents turned to traditional painting to establish the portrayal of a steady governance. Often set in the context of a library, surrounded by books, globes, and letters, the leaders of our nation used these props to signify the weight of the executive office and the seriousness of the man who held it. Portrait after portrait, a succession of presidents was spotlighted for their gravitas as they led the nation though tumultuous times.
The advent of photography encouraged the shifting artistic styles of the twentieth century. Liberated from strict representation, artists experienced more freedom in creating a visual narrative. Color, composition, and context combined to establish the tone of each leader’s portrait.
There are several portraits of the twentieth century capitalize on this aesthetic freedom to represent the distinct mood of the president. Notably, American artist and well-known portraitist John Singer Sargent bridges the traditions of the late 19th century with the modern era in his 1903 depiction of President Theodore Roosevelt. Placing the trailblazing president at the foot of a staircase, Sargent’s painterly style captures the impatience of the strong-willed Roosevelt.
Nearly seventy years later, President John F. Kennedy’s portrait is unusual in many ways. Painted in 1971 by Aaron Shikler, this posthumous presidential portrait defied the traditional pose of a president looking directly at the viewer. After careful consultation with the president’s widow, the pair agreed on the unique representation. The depiction of Kennedy, with eyes downward and reflecting in thought, is a somber tribute to the emotional depth of the 35th president.
A new president yields a new aesthetic
As the millennium opened with a return to traditional portraits of President Clinton by Simmie Knox in 2001 and President George W. Bush by John Howard Sanden in 2011, the watershed moment of Barack Obama’s presidency and subsequent portrait gained even more impact.
Artist Kehinde Wiley’s 2017 portrait of President Obama transformed the possibilities of a presidential portrait. Just as the president himself broke boundaries, so does Wiley. The first African-American artist to paint an official presidential portrait, Wiley, like Obama, was raised by a single mother, whose absent father was also of African descent. After graduating with an MFA from Yale, Wiley’s art career is best known for its blending of old masters with current cultural icons. With images that routinely address issues of politics and race, Wiley is especially aware of his groundbreaking role in an art historical context. “The importance of influence, the anxiety of influence that exists in the act of looking at all of the artists who came before you is just a normal state of affairs for most artists. In my particular type of work, I’ve turned that anxiety into my subject matter. . . how does the present tense interact with the past?” Wiley takes the traditional and somewhat stodgy rules of portraiture and reconfigures them into something relevant and innovative.
Wiley’s portrait of Obama becomes the most inventive of the genre, shattering the signs and signifiers of presidential portraits. Strategic Advisor and Media Commentator, David L. Mercer observes this. “One can certainly say that Obama’s portrait breaks the mold of presidential portraits before his. But, then again we can go further to say that Obama himself broke the mold of what we expected presidents to look like and even more what they should do.”
Vibrant and colorful, the large-scaled Obama portrait is the first in the American genre that is exclusively set in nature. Instead of being contextualized by books and globes, President Obama is surrounded by flowers — chrysanthemums for Chicago, jasmine for Hawaii, and African blue lilies for Kenya, serving as geographical touchstones of the president’s personal history. But, according to Mr. Mercer, the natural setting speaks to Obama’s leadership in heading off a major economic crisis. “Obama gave us recovery, yes, but also rebirth and renewal despite the burdens the financial crisis set upon the country. I believe this is captured in the painter’s imagery of Obama’s setting in an organic and natural bloom.”
Mercer explains further, “It’s all to say that Obama’s portrait speaks to and captures not just what he may have said, but, in fact, what he did:
● In the midst of the financial crisis and the country teetering on the brink of economic collapse, former President Obama had a choice — focus exclusively on obtaining as much stimulus funding from Congress to keep the country financially afloat or to advance the Affordable Care Act (ACA) at the same time.
In the face of great pressure to choose the former alone, Obama, instead sought a balance to getting substantial stimulus spending, but also passing ACA.
Why?
● Because, in what turns out to be Obama’s prescient thinking, he knew that even with increased stimulus funding, the American Middle Class family could not sustain itself with ever increasing healthcare costs that in the future could land them in the poor house.
● So he sought with success to pass ACA legislation, using all the political capital he could muster, in order to bend the cost curve that threatened the American Middle Class. He, in effect, sought and achieved both short and long-term protections that restored hope in America’s future.”
President Obama’s popularity with the American people
According to Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery, the painting has yielded a record number of viewers. To accommodate the public interest in President Obama’s portrait, the painting is set to tour different parts of the country throughout 2021–2022. In a digital age, it is remarkable that presidential portraiture not only retains its relevance, it has become a popular attraction for audiences. President Obama’s portrait embodies more than an individual president; he represents a new level of possibility for future generations. Seventeen-year-old student Samara Jenkins describes her feelings about the portrait. “For me, the meaning behind the Obama portrait signifies peace shown by the nature surrounding him. It represents that there was peace while he was president. Now as people are chanting in the streets that black lives matter, it just shows his contrast with other presidents. Obama heard our voices and helped build a new America.”
The portrait is not without its controversy. To some, such a radical departure from the traditional settings, namely the natural imagery, detracts from the image and the genre. Others, however, find the depiction of Obama as an accurate reflection of his presidency. John Quackenbush, a professor of Computational Biology and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health who was recognized by the Obama Administration as a White House Champion of Change, feels the portrait reveals the essence of Obama’s character. “I know many people critique the background of this painting, but it has never been what I see first when I look at the portrait. The two things that always strike me are (1) his thoughtful demeanor, calmly taking in the situation and considering his options, and (2) his caring eyes which recognize that whatever decision he makes, his responsibility is to protect all of the citizens of this country to the best of his ability.”
If the role of a presidential portrait is to define the legacy of a leader to take its place in the context of the American presidency at large, Wiley’s painting achieves this goal with a portrait that breaks barriers, aesthetically and conceptually. Future presidents will look to this groundbreaking painting of President Obama for inspiration as to whom a president could be, and to what our nation should be.
