How weird is Geoge Bush, the artist?

[mecch]

Can we agree that all George Bush is a contemporary artist of interest?  The canvases are no worse than, say, Tracey Emin.
http://animalnewyork.com/2014/george-w-bush-took-paintings-google-images/

French critic Roland Barthes had this concept of "flat death" about photography. Its one of the  most important in photography criticism even today.  That is, look at an old photo (real photo, printed from a negative) and you actually have a sort of contact with the subject.  The camera, the silver emulsion, recorded light rays bouncing back from the subject. Therefore, you, the viewer of the print, have some sort of pretty immediate, if metaphysical, relation to the subject. Look at a print struck from a negative of, say, WWI trenches, and you are one step away from that moment in history. One step from the dead subject. A photo is, therefore, "flat death".

Many critics have wondered about what happens to this rather electron-based experience in the age of digital reproduction. 

It is interesting that many of Bush's canvases are reproduced from digital images. Not from negatives.  Though yes, he did actually meet these people, in the flesh. In a sense, he is producing something that is extremely dead, from the images.  But he met them.  Think about that, in terms of his political career. Its some sort of creepy triangle that reproduces all of our virtual realities.

[Joe K]

I will try and find the link again, but I read that what the shrub did was to actually outline the digital images and then paint them in... just like those old color-by-number velvet paint sets.

Seems about right.

Joe

found it: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/09/george-bushs-paintings-bear-uncanny-resemblance-to-google-images

[mecch]

Yes, exactly.
(Is this so far from Warhol in the 60's?)
And what of his policies, rhetoric and wars. All phoney, smoke and mirrors. Real deaths. But for so long, too many don't really feel the travesty.
 

[zach]

actually, that he paints by numbers or by inspiration or by watching bob ross, doesn't matter to me. that he paints all, raises him half a step in my estimation

he'll still need about ten steps to be above anything other than a bottom feeder to me though

[Joe K]

actually, that he paints by numbers or by inspiration or by watching bob ross, doesn't matter to me. that he paints all, raises him half a step in my estimation

he'll still need about ten steps to be above anything other than a bottom feeder to me though

There is nothing the shrub could do that would change my opinion of him as inherently evil.  This is the president that proposed a Constitutional Amendment that would enshrine into law, the second class citizens of gays.

Joe

[mecch]

It is a very odd choice of occupation for an ex-US President. Count me in, I am at least, intrigued....

[mecch]

Well, the elephant in the room. Artiste ratée, Hitler.

[skeebo1969]

   I saw his daughter showcase his work while interviewing him on one of the morning shows.  Paint by numbers was the first thing that ran across my mind.  On another note, his daughter creeps me out for some reason.

[mitch777]

He should have stuck to perfecting his bathroom selfies. Maybe a bigger market in the "hotel starving artist" trade.

[mecch]

His daughters are uber creepy.

[Theyer]

Churchill did some fine watercolours .

I am delighted Mr Bush has an activity for the Day Center.

The technique he hit upon can indeed to seen as painting by numbers but projecting an image onto a wall or canvas then drawing round the imagine has been a artist trick for 100 ,s off years as dear Mr David Hockney showed us with his deconstructions off old masters ,with light boxes and prisms . After all when you got some mad pope wanting his ceiling done for his regular Easter Party anything that speeds it up you jump at.

Bush fiddling with some app that creates outlines that he then paints in is the most prefect manner for Bush to paint , if the app also identified what colour to use that would top it all .

Is he allowed to speak to camera , I cannot remember him doing so for an age ,but then I have no TV.

[mecch]

Well, he won't be coming to Basel Art Fair because he'll be arrested and tried for war crimes. 

[drewm]

Didn't Herr Hitler paint watercolors?

[Theyer]

Well, he won't be coming to Basel Art Fair because he'll be arrested and tried for war crimes. 

Performance Art.

[Theyer]

Didn't Herr Hitler paint watercolors?

Dabbled.
Oils ,no people in them.
Very bitter that his own appraisal off his artistic efforts was not shared by anyone , at all.

[mecch]

Hitler didn't have the sensibility to be modern or contemporary. And his technique was lacking to be a iconoclastic classicist, for the times (which was all about contemporary).  As you know, after he rose to power, he purged all contemporary painting. Not so much architecture and design, which continued to blend classicism with extreme machine age modernism.

Whatever Bush is doing, ironic or naive, IMO it is completely contemporary. 

[Theyer]

Well he attempted to purge all contemporary painting but an huge amount resurfaced and the work off getting work back to the families off the original owners continues.

[Theyer]

Hitler didn't have the sensibility to be modern or contemporary. And his technique was lacking to be a iconoclastic classicist, for the times (which was all about contemporary).  As you know, after he rose to power, he purged all contemporary painting. Not so much architecture and design, which continued to blend classicism with extreme machine age modernism.

Whatever Bush is doing, ironic or naive, IMO it is completely contemporary.

There was also no painter on a standing with the Nazi,s like architecture had with Speer,

[mitch777]

Performance Art.