Gallery Shows Off Barack and Michelle Obama Portraits
Interesting….
Former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama unveiled their portraits for the National Portrait Gallery today. Each one picked “acclaimed African-American artists to portray them.” From NBC News:
“Pretty sharp!” Barack Obama quipped of his portrait, painted by Kehinde Wiley — an artist best known for his vibrant, large-scale paintings of African-Americans. The former president also joked about how he had to negotiate to reduce the number of grays hairs and make his ears look smaller in the painting.
Obama also thanked Baltimore-based artist Amy Sherald, who painted Michelle Obama, for capturing the “grace, and beauty, and intelligence, and charm and hotness” of his wife.
Sherald and Wiley are the first African-American artists to create Smithsonian-commissioned portraits of a former president and first lady. And their subjects make history once more, as the first black presidential spouses to be immortalized in the gallery.
“The ability to be first African-American painter to paint the first African-American president…it doesn’t get any better than that,” Wiley said during his remarks.
The portraits have received some reactions on social media:
Outfielders are going to have trouble with the new obstacle at Wrigley Field this season. pic.twitter.com/EEjRu8HOsb
— Dan McQuade (@dhm) February 12, 2018
I knew Obama’s portrait looked familiar pic.twitter.com/13JeXEKgxv
— Katie Leach (@KatieMLeach) February 12, 2018
Michelle Obama’s portrait was unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery…
Aaaaand it looks nothing like her. pic.twitter.com/EQitllF47w— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) February 12, 2018
Obama’s portrait is especially weird because as a purported White Sox fan, it’s unclear how he ended up in the Wrigley ivy. pic.twitter.com/ScEMvYHKSg
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 12, 2018
I’m stoked that President Obama’s official portrait looks like the cover of his spoken word album pic.twitter.com/Lj6FmGFlbM
— Robert Wheel LLC (@BobbyBigWheel) February 12, 2018
Loving this Obama portrait pic.twitter.com/zaGmqYAchQ
— Eric Schmidt (@TalkingSchmidt) February 12, 2018
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Obama’s lurking in the shadow of … what, a bush? A wall? Bad optics either way.
What a colossal waste of taxpayer money!
Obama bathing in a background of marijuana weeds, how fitting. As for Michelle, I would certainly describe her as two dimensional. I guess “flat” is another descriptor I would now use.
The portrait of Michelle is quite a nice painting. It could have been so much worse. It could have looked like her.
The Kenyan’s hands are too big for the body.
A painter requested to do my portrait in oil, and he did the same thing. I pointed it out, and he corrected them.
he has 5 fingers and no thumb on his left hand. Both are amateurish . My 5th grade grandson could have done better.
Wow, certainly does appear to have 5 fingers on the left hand.
Somebody please help me.
Is there something wrong with my screen or my eyes, or did they make Michelle Obama’s skin LIGHTER than it actually is?
The painting of Obumbles is fine, if a bit ameture. Though I do find some irony in the fact that Bush takes up more space on the canvas than he does. Good news though if he finally has to admit that the painting is not the best he finally has something that he can blame on Bush and it be factual.
As far as the other painting, it must be of Obama’s made up girlfriend because that sure as heck isn’t moochelle.
On the left, we have an ad for MiracleGro. The ivy will soon grow over and obscure Obama‘s legacy.
On the right, we have an ad for OxiClean. It will make your whites whiter, and your colors bright, so the colors can be over represented.among the background of evil whiteness.
Barack’s portrait got his face well, but the hands are bizarrely large, to say nothing of the extra finger.
Michelle’s portrait doesn’t look much like her.
These really shouldn’t be called “portraits.” They’re more “impressions,” especially hers.
as ugly as these paintings are, and make no mistake: they be U-G-L-Y!, at least they aren’t as ugly as the persons they represent, as they only show the surface of those two scumbags.
and how long before some SJW type goes ape5hit because Moo-shelle’s portrait is smaller than Bam-Bam’s?
Obama’s really isn’t bad other than the ludicrous mistake with 5 fingers on the hand. Seriously this isn’t photoshop it’s not like you make a painting fast, did NOBODY proofcheck the painting throughout its creation?
Michelle’s is a disaster. It is not a painting of Michelle Obama.
This whole painting fiasco is actually a metaphor for Obama’s entire term in office. Literally dozens of his predecessors have an established tradition of Presidential portraits where they all did something very similar and fairly successfully.
Obama has to do something ‘different’ against previous wisdom – and it fails spectacularly.