Tuesday, January 20, 2009
2008 / Inauguration / Visual Art Art and Inaugurations
Posted by Jen Graves on Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 2:15 PM
Statuary Hall
Obama's inaugural luncheon was held in Statuary Hall, which is basically a ridiculously architecturally elaborate (the Pantheon blushes and faints) museum of arcane black and white statues.
Were you wondering too what all those black and white men represent? (I'm assuming they were all men because it looked that way on TV and, well, because.) It turns out that each statue represents a state. Here's a map of the statues. Washington's statue is of a man who was "massacred by Indians." Yes.
That covers the sculpture and architecture. But what about the painting that was borrowed for the occasion?
Turns out a painting at the luncheon has been a tradition since Ronald Reagan's inauguration in 1985, when he showed this. Morning in America, sure—and cheesy and religious as hell. This is a painting that tells you to sit back and do nothing; all will happen for and to you. You're nothing but a subject. Hello, 1980s!
For G.H.W., it was humility all the way (and again with the great taste—look at that godhead above the godhead!).
Clinton (first term) goes with this brushy, apple-cheeked young Thomas Jefferson, which makes perfect sense for the apple-cheeked saxophonist. Clinton Two is thoroughly chastened (although he doesn't realize how chastened he's about to be) and picks a homely and lonely-looking John Adams. Adams, notably, is facing right, while Jefferson was facing left.
Wouldn't you know W comes in and blows them all away with his bad, focusless art?
W2 is a dramatic, ominous sublime by Bierstadt. Bush may have meant it to signify the state of post-9/11 America, but instead it clearly symbolizes his frightening presidency.
Now here's Obama's choice: Thomas Hill's View of the Yosemite Valley from 1865, created in homage to Lincoln's setting aside of the Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias as a public reserve.
There's the environmental message (look at that broken-off tree trunk on the right). There's also the fact that the distance is hazy, not in an anxious way—but in the way that what's out there is an open question. The colors are fairly muted. The light source has only an oblique presence. As far as 19th-century American landscapes go, this one is pretty low-drama (no-drama Obama).
And most of all, this is a Western landscape. (Most presidencies, with the glaring exception of Reagan, feel Eastern or Southern by contrast.) This is a portrait of pioneering without much of the swagger usually associated with it. Not only are we pioneering, we're pioneering pioneering, quietly. There's a path, sort of, leading straight ahead, downhill, and into a canyon of rocks. Here we go.
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You are wrong. They aren't all men. IL, WY, CO... You could have at least clicked around a bit and checked instead of assuming.
Yosemite was a place to get to, the last stop on a long journey. Could it be the same, looking west from Chicago?
2) Clinton and Jefferson share a likeness, not in that they were both renaissance men, but that they had rosey cheeks. How appropriate. Because everyone knows Jefferson had rosey cheeks. It, like, makes sense.
3) And then there is the "environmental message" of the singular, broken-off tree trunk (broken at the top, mind you ) in Obama's choice of the Thomas Hill painting. Ok ok, someone else can run with this....
Perhaps he chose it so that he could explain why he likes it: 'El Capitan is on the left'.
Ohhh man. That is so bad.
@13, "The Pantheon blushes and faints", I assume, at having its basic form made a vehicle for ornate decoration. Also, it's in Rome.
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