Obama’s face rules folk art sales
Perhaps not since John F. Kennedy, whose dusty portraits can still be seen in kitchens and barbershops and alongside the antique beer cans at bars like Manuel’s Tavern in Atlanta, has a presidency so fanned the flames of painterly ardor among hobbyist and professional artists.
Mr. Obama’s campaign was well known for inspiring art, including Shepard Fairey’s ubiquitous “Hope” poster, a version of which is now in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Months after the election, with the glow of the administration’s first 100 days dimming, it might have been expected that enthusiasm for Obama art would be dimming, too…
The phenomenon has been a boon to the near-anonymous painting factories crowded together in the suburbs of Shenzhen, China, famous for cranking out copies of masterpieces, along with landscapes and semitasteful nudes. Another one, seemingly based in Germany, offers stately Obamas amid air-brushy likenesses of Tupac Shakur, Bruce Lee and Al Pacino (in his “Scarface” role), advertised as “real hand-embellished” paintings on canvas.
Market interest has also helped small-time artists like Dan Lacey, of tiny Elko, Minn., a self-described disillusioned conservative who made a name for himself last year in the blogosphere with his inexplicably strange portraits of Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin depicted with pancakes stacked on top of their heads.
Lately, he has turned to Mr. Obama, cranking out both eBay-ready conventional portraits — “I hate to say this, but I can do ones like that in about an hour,” he said — and even stranger works that have tended toward portrayals of the 44th president naked on a unicorn, often performing gallant deeds like wrestling a bear on Wall Street or taking the controls of the US Airways flight that landed in the Hudson River.
“There’s a consistent demand for Obama, both for things that are funny and also for the serious, sort of Aaron Shikler kinds of treatments,” said Mr. Lacey, referring to the artist who painted well-known portraits of the Kennedy family…
Mr. Lacey, who admits to parting with paintings for as little as $1 on the Web, said he sold his president-wrestling-a-bear fantasia for $600 and recently received a commission for a unicorn-themed Obama. He intends to ride the surging presidential art wave as long as it will keep him afloat.
During the previous administration, he said, he had also tried his hand at some portraits of George W. Bush but added, in a tone that mingled regret with professional candor, “You really couldn’t sell them.”
I’ve known a few folk artists in my life who got lucky and were discovered. Most labor in the vineyard of love for their self-taught expression and that’s alright with me. If they’re riding peoples’ love for a president who seems to care for the common man and woman – so be it. It’s all part of the same social and political process.
