Often, however, the symbolism is more straightforward. That was Jackie Kennedy's request, he told People: "The only stipulation she made was, 'I don't want him to look the way everybody else makes him look, with the bags under his eyes and that penetrating gaze. ![]() Kennedy famously shows the president looking down, so that his face is obscured. Aaron Shikler's posthumous portrait of John F. Gilbert Stuart's image of George Washington includes symbols of the Roman republic and of American democracy. Its inclusion is apparently a nod to Bush's international successes-the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the defeat of Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War. Healey's "The Peacemakers," a painting of Abraham Lincoln meeting with Generals Ulysses Grant and William Sherman and Admiral David Porter in the closing days of the Civil War. ![]() Take Herbert Abrams's portrait of George H.W. "I could never get this Monica thing completely out of my mind and it is subtly incorporated in the painting." (When you're a portrait painter, there's little chance you'll be impeached for perjury.) But Robert Langdon's fever dreams aside, there's a long tradition of artists hiding symbols and cryptic messages in works commissioned by the rich and famous-sometimes with the commissioner's collusion, and sometimes not. Perhaps Shanks decided to add the dress later-or perhaps, taking a cue from the dissembling ways of his subject, he opted to hide it. I'll just try to paint the man, his intelligence, his amiability and his stature, maybe paint him fairly close to humor and try to get it just right." "But I think this is one case when I need to be fairly straightforward. "There are times when I love to play all kinds of complicated games in painting," he told The Philadelphia Inquirer. When he was working on the painting prior to its unveiling in 2006, Shanks described it in terms strikingly at odds with his current account. While one formal portrait is always on display, that's currently Chuck Close's likeness- an image that manages to be at once both more abstract and more staid and straightforward. There are some 55 Clinton images in the gallery's collection, and they're occasionally rotated on and off view. And she noted that the painting isn't exactly the single, definitive Clinton portrait. Bethany Bentley said the Clintons have done no such thing. The answer to the last query is simple, according to a spokesperson for the National Portrait Gallery: no. Is Clinton really the most famous liar of all time? ( Um.) Is it impressive commitment to verisimilitude or just weird that Shanks used an actual blue dress to produce the shadow? How did the Clintons figure out the secret code when no one else had? And are they really pushing the Portrait Gallery to remove it? There is, as they say, a lot to unpack here. They're putting a lot of pressure on them. ![]() They want it removed from the National Portrait Gallery. It is also a bit of a metaphor in that it represents a shadow on the office he held, or on him.Īnd so the Clintons hate the portrait. ![]() It actually literally represents a shadow from a blue dress that I had on a mannequin, that I had there while I was painting it, but not when he was there. If you look at the left-hand side of it there's a mantle in the Oval Office and I put a shadow coming into the painting and it does two things. He and his administration did some very good things, of course, but I could never get this Monica thing completely out of my mind and it is subtly incorporated in the painting. The reality is he's probably the most famous liar of all time.
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