Bush's Painting and Putin's Dogs

I think the reason that people talk about the paintings of former President George W. Bush is because we think this is a less controversial topic than his presidency, and might well wonder what might have been if he took up a brush some time before deciding to go into politics. With the unveiling of portraits of world figures, however, the politician and the painter collide.

I find the portrait of Putin to be interesting because Bush has the simple, unfussy style that might come from having taken up art late in life. But in the asymmetry of the face of Vladimir Putin, one wonders if this is a deliberate choice of the artist? Is it possible the painter, Bush, has the ability to "do nuance" that the politician did not?  The observer looks at one face, two faces look back. Not a bad rendering, one might say, of a figure into whose soul one might have supposed to look--and who had yet deeper, more opaque layers, no?

But I find the observation that Putin had a kind of one-upsmanship about his dogs versus the former president's kind of absurd and yet very real. All this shirtless horse-riding and wild animal business suggests an affinity for an idealized hyper-masculinism, so "My dogs are bigger than yours"--as if the size of one's dog is an extension of one's, um, virility? Fits Putin's image So. Much.

(No endorsement of Bush or any of his political works intended, mind you.)