Obama Straightening it Out?

The rest of the picture confirms the story: Decorative plants, healthy but not too exuberant, reach just to the lower edge of another gilded frame, with barely a leaf or two spilling over the marble of the Greek revival fireplace.

Its a totem pole, Harvard faculty club version: Reason (embodied in classical Greek proportions) upholds a tamed Nature, which in turn supports human taste for a certain luxury and Pride in our wisdom and power, as expressed by the gilt-edged painting.

Thus we have a President who seems to feel that capitalist hubris (gilt) is not exaggerated as long as reason, nature and profit are in their proper order. The same President who argued for a certain amount of off-shore drilling, just not so much as to make a mess.

Stephen

No irony in the fact the Moran is an oil painting? Actually, oil paints were typically made with linseed oil and had nothing to do with petroleum. Today, however, most artists prefer acrylic paints, made with a by-product of gasoline production.

What’s framed in a pictorial sense is Moran’s “idealized” impression of unspoiled natural beauty, but even as an object, the painting is an artifact of a pre-petroleum age.

From this angle, Obama’s head is contained in the frame, as if part of the art or part of the artifact, as he endeavors to align a vision of America perceived and recorded by a contemporary of Teddy Roosevelt within a modern Oval Office.