Official portraits test our feelings about the Obama era
Fellow Chicagoans might notice that oblique reference to the Latin slogan on the city's official seal, "Urbs in horto," Latin for "City in a Garden," a slogan that the late, great columnist Mike Royko famously suggested should be "Ubi est mea" -- "Where's mine?"
At least this art project doesn't touch on the contentious world of sports, I thought -- until the Chicago Tribune's Phil Thompson reported this viral reaction among local baseball fans: Why is Obama's portrait set in the vines of Wrigley Field.
That's art in a working-class but also gentrifying town. Old-timers like me can remember a similar shock when Pablo Picasso's untitled lion-like gift to Chicago was unveiled in 1967. One North Side alderman sniffed that it should have been replaced with a statue of "Mr. Cub," Ernie Banks.
But the Picasso not only was slowly but surely embraced by Chicagoans; it also changed the way the city's civic community related to public art -- for the better. Diversity since has been not only tolerated but encouraged. Could that happen with post-Obama presidential art?
Context matters. The former president is not backgrounded by greenery as much as he is floating, superimposed over the leaves like a Photoshopped image. The face is clearly and accurately that of a serious, stone-faced and thoughtful Obama, one who appears to be sitting and contemplating, What do I do next?
Obama's hands at rest look accurate, too, but they look larger than normal. Maybe that's supposed to be symbolic of a man with big work to do. Maybe that's a cheeky cosmic joke, a subtle reference to our current president's peculiar obsession with the notion that people think he has tiny hands. Portrait artists tend only to smile at such interpretations.
The Obama portraits might best be viewed through the lens of a post-Obama future that is only beginning to come into focus. They remind me of what continues in my mind to be the most compelling Obama portrait: Shepard Fairey's 2008 red, white and blue collage of the upturned face of the young Obama over the upper-case word "HOPE."
As campaign art, its message was powerful enough to accelerate history. It put a brand on a candidate, a political movement and a social era.
A decade later we can see how tough that act was to follow -- for a president, for a painter and for a voting public. But some of us still have hope.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2018 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
