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# George W. Bush's Aristocratic "Art"
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/george-w-bushs-aristocratic-art/
- Published: 2014-02-27T02:09:15.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:17:21.000Z
- Description: Presidents have painted before, but that doesn't make this denunciation any less earned. Bush's diplomacy was bloody, criminal, and disastrous; his "personal diplomacy" is of the same murderous hand.
- Author: Mostafa Heddaya
- Tags: Opinion, George W. Bush, Presidential art, Washington DC, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:03 (2014, 2015, part 1)

![George_W._Bush_Presidential_Center_07_-_jpfagerback_-_2013-04-26](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/02/george_w-_bush_presidential_center_07_-_jpfagerback_-_2013-04-26.jpg)

The George W. Bush Presidential Center is to host an exhibition of the man’s paintings (image via Wikipedia)

An old college friend once rented a townhouse in Dupont Circle in Washington, DC, from a retired spook who, in his later years, had taken up the avocation of painting. All he painted were phone booths, in a realist style that played primarily with light, and the house’s walls were covered in the vaguely creepy results. God knows what recesses of his psyche compelled him to put public telephones to canvas, but it was no doubt an interest cultivated by a certain rotten gentility, an insipid appreciation of painting as an aristocratic diversion for purifying the mind in its waning years (he was a [Groton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groton%5FSchool?ref=hyperallergic.com) man) — respite and absolution after a lifetime of unpleasant business.

Similarly, it was [recently announced](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/george-w-bushs-library-is-hosting-his-art-show.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) that the 43rd president of the United States, the [reluctant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawford%5F%28film%29?ref=hyperallergic.com) blue blood George W. Bush, would have a retrospective of his “paintings” at his [Robert A. M. Stern](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert%5FA.%5FM.%5FStern?ref=hyperallergic.com)\-designed Presidential Library in Texas, titled *The Art of Leadership: A President’s Personal Diplomacy*. Though this is just the kind of soft story that reverberates in the media under the various guises of knowing [snark](http://gawker.com/5982694/hacker-exposes-bush-family-emails-photos-and-george-w-bushs-amazing-self+portraits?ref=hyperallergic.com), journalistic [curiosity](http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-bush-art-20140225,0,7344699.story?ref=hyperallergic.com#axzz2uU0Ei99i), or a sycophant’s [reverence](http://www.vulture.com/2013/02/jerry-saltz-george-w-bush-is-a-good-painter.html?ref=hyperallergic.com), the man’s atrocious paintings are not harmless distractions. Certain schools of criticism, or certain [unschooled critics](http://www.vulture.com/2013/02/jerry-saltz-george-w-bush-is-a-good-painter.html?ref=hyperallergic.com), might have you think otherwise, but sometimes an art object can only be assessed through its creator, especially if this person was once the most powerful man on the planet. Bush can paint a thousand puppies, or render himself in a bathtub brimming with his own crocodile tears, but that will never change the status of such works as the artifacts of a repulsive criminal, and a stain upon all honest art.

Presidents have [painted before](http://mentalfloss.com/article/50089/4-presidents-who-painted-fun-and-profit?ref=hyperallergic.com), but that doesn’t make this denunciation any less earned. Bush’s diplomacy was bloody, criminal, and disastrous; his “personal diplomacy” is of the same murderous hand.