Stanek weekend question: Thoughts on oil painting depicting Obama’s anti-life agenda?
Click to enlarge…
On August 31 artist Jon McNaughton debuted an “interactive painting he has created with 60 symbols that detail the ‘Obamanation’ of the Barack Obama Presidency,” according to Fox News.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the painting is you can scroll over it on McNaughton’s website for detailed explanations of all the symbols. Three depict Obama pushing his anti-life agenda. Click to enlarge…
The abortion segment calls Obama out for his votes against the Illinois Born Alive Infant Protection Act as state senator:
The most consistently pro-choice Congressman in US history with a score of 100% by The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), Obama has brought his radical infanticide ideologies with him to the White House. With the passing of Obamacare and his recent mandate that all medical institutions, regardless of religious principle offer contraceptives, Obama has moved forward his insidious agenda.
Here’s a video by McNaughton explaining the thinking behind his painting…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyv5EovqoJo[/youtube]
What are your thoughts on the painting in general, the concept?
Using one’s artistic talents like this a novel way to expose Obama’s radical anti-life agenda. Does this give you any other creative ideas?

I think it’s sensationalist and kinda stupid, honestly. And I despise Obama’s policies.
Jack, I generally agree. I think there’s better ways to attack Obama’s abysmal record than drawing a kind of silly looking painting. Oh, and on am aesthetic level I find it far too cluttered.
It’s just that it’s unintelligent propaganda, I hate that stuff. And it hilariously has stuff like “uses teleprompters” next to actual issues like Fast and Furious lolol. Oh no not the teleprompters!!!
I think it is brilliant. If FB, twitter, Conservative news, the public media and public print news outlets can’t get the truth out-than maybe the painting will touch those whom are oblivious to to the other media. Art has a way of touching the soul that the mind cannot comprehend.
As far as “propaganda” goes, almost everything on here that I am aware of can be verified by original sources.
Art is often meant to be symbolic. Most of our brilliant artists of past did the same. i.e how many have studied the elusive smile of the Mona Lisa–and that is just one, simple smile.
This painting has made history.
I don’t think anyone’s claiming the painting doesn’t depict things that are factually true. They are claiming it depicts them superficially and badly in an artistic sense. Both of which are quite reasonable critiques. Obama can’t string one sentence together without using a teleprompter, which is funny. Obama’s DOJ is directly responsible for the death of a US border agent and over two hundred Mexican citizens, which not remotely funny but is entirely appalling and criminal. Both make Obama look bad, but they should be approached on separate levels and this painting doesn’t do that. Also, it is cluttered and element-overloaded.
I don’t like it either, but my reasons are less thoughtful than Jack’s, or JDC’s. I just think it’s ugly-looking. This guy has done other paintings that I have liked, but I think this one’s a miss.
He could have put the pro-choice interactive segment up front. I would like to have seen both male and female bloody hands on the sign though, since that’s accurate, but there’s only so much you can put in a sign. A recognizable Cecile Richards or Sandra Fluke hairdo would have worked. ;-)
The mapped and interactive pic is a cool idea, and a legitimate means for McNaughton to get across his ideas.
Notice the lefties whining??? It means that he did something right.
Tasteless and dumb.
I expect it to be a huge hit with conservatives.
I find all of McNaughton’s paintings to be unbearably cheesy, but to each their own.
Pictures speak a thousand words. Art has always been used to express views whether they be political or personal, cultural or social. For all the critics do you read political cartoons? This visual depiction of the most corrupt, law breaking, anti-America and anti-American President will have a profound affect on the outcome of this election when it goes viral on the internet. You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.
I liked the painting. I liked all of the symbols, and how the artist was able to convey the sombre and depressed mood Obama has created in America. I also liked how the artist contrasted these dark images with a smiling President Obama. The smiling President Obama captures how obtuse this President has been to the plight of the Union and the ordinary American citizen. All around a very penetrating look at the current malaise in America, as weell as an effective peeling away of the false charisma and compassion of this President.
A piece of art representing Obama’s presidency should indeed be ugly.
No, Joan.
Abortion is tasteless and dumb.
Not a big fan of McNaughton’s political stuff. His religious work is excellent however. Look at this painting:
http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/artwork/view_zoom/319
Brilliant concept, poignant, and wonderfully executed.
Alice: You wrote: “I don’t think anyone’s claiming the painting doesn’t depict things that are factually true.”
JackBorsch states: “It’s just that it’s unintelligent propaganda”
–is that not claiming that things are untrue?
I thought Alice had a pretty accurate critique. Factually correct stuff but it seems ‘cluttered’. Obama smearing dung on at the American flag and urinating on a copy of the US Constitution would have been very accurate too and easier to understand.
These past four years has been nothing but unintelligent propaganda.
Propaganda does not mean it’s untruthful. It is propaganda, it’s for the most part accurate with some opinion thrown in.
Alice accurately stated my feelings on it. Would you all take a critique of Bush or someone seriously if I added his silly “Bushisms” in with legitimate criticisms of a serious policy decision? He just put every single thing he disliked about Obama in one painting, it looks dumb and it doesn’t get his point across very well.
I too, find it to be cluttered.
http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/page/view_collection/Patriotic/421
I find this one of his more effective and to the point, personally.
I agree Kate. And that other painting you linked to is a good example of what I was talking about.
Does that low flying plane represent the flight of AF1 that scared the daylights out of New Yorkers? Supposedly The One was irate and totally oblivious as to how this could happen. Some low level flunky in the White House ended up taking the blame for ordering the flight!!!?.
Sure, and the Queen of England cleans my house every other Thursday.
What’s really scary is that people believed it.
John L: McNaughton is obviously influenced by the late Arnold Friberg (both artists are Mormon), so the cheesiness will be there for sure.
Somewhat hilariously, one of Friberg’s figures actually looks a bit like Mitt Romney. ;-) http://goo.gl/nRZJj
Our task is to reach those still able to be reached. If this painting does that for a few wandering souls then it is a good thing.
Jerry — I understand, but that defense could be mounted in support of anything, however tasteless or counterproductive. Personally, I don’t see how this kind of pedestrian art (“see now, here’s what this means…”) could be especially interesting — much less persuasive of anything — to anyone not already convinced. Among other things, it’s less art than argument. If it argued as art, that would be interesting. But it’s more “arted as argument,” I’m afraid. ;-)
rasqual:
The old saying has it: “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. All I am saying is if this painting somehow connects with a person who is otherwise clueless then the effort is validated.
Our job is to win over one person at a time. If we are to defeat the imposter in the race to the White House it is going to be done on the strength of person to person contact. We see there are alot of lost souls out there….perhaps this painting will reach a few.
I have to disagree with the “cluttered.” I understand that art is supposed to have balance, perspective etc. But when we study the masters such as Botticelli, DaVinci and Raphael we find they are often full of people mustered around, telling of several stories in one painting.
I.e. Socrates in Athens Speaking with Plato, The Transfiguration, Last Judgement, Adoration of the Magi, Rubens-Adoration-the list goes on….and these are masterpieces not to be argued with.
Jack I agree with you. So what if Obama needs a teleprompter? So what about “toilet humor”. I mean REALLY? Would we feel the same if someone painted a Bush painting highlighting how the Patriot act eroded our rights and then you hovered over a computer where it talked about how Bush thinks we use “internets”.
Obama is a bad guy and has done a lot of bad stuff but this painting is just silly.
Blessing. The ‘cluttered’ isn’t necessarily bad or wrong; imo he is a good artist but this piece is more of a collage cause it has some 60 different subjects in it.
I see what you mean about the many stories, Blessing, but I think the Mannerists did it in a much more visually pleasingly way. Of course, most of the mediocre works from back then probably didn’t get saved.
I’m not trying to say this guy is a hack, because some of his other work is pretty powerful, but this one just looks silly to me. It’s like looking at a Chick’s tract, and I think that diminishes the subject matter, much the way I cringe when pro-lifers use arguments that I think are flawed. But then, the only argument that really works for me is abortion=murder.
Of course, I’m not exactly highbrow (watching The Real Housewives of NJ as I type this), and to each her own. Incidentally, I’m pretty lower-L liberal, but I’ve never been a fan of Obama. Kind of irrelevant because I’m in Canada, though.
I like it. Apparently alot of people do as well because business is booming.
Typing on my Kindle, so please be patient with any mistakes.
“Cluttered” doesn’t mean “has a lot of elements,” it means “has a lot of elements that don’t work very well together.” Just because a painting has a lot going on, that doesn’t automatically make it messy. Being messy makes it messy.
We don’t like being shown what is truth. Abortion pics have been protested for as long as we’ve had them. Comments like “cluttered” and ”ugly” are good descriptions. They obviously are part of the sad truth of America under this president.
As a artist and an activist I see so many critics who do nothing but criticize. I hope some people would be moved to DO something other than make comments. Paintings are made to create something in the viewer. Sensationalism is all around us with lies, why not use truth to move people? And if you feel no sensation when you think of this president and the horrible things he has done then something is desperately wrong with you.
If we who know right from wrong do nothing we are an accomplice to the wrong we see just as the artist has stated and we will suffer the consequences also. Ezekiel 33:8-9
I think that art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
It’s hard not to laugh out loud at an artist who could state the following:
I chose to use an undisclosed studio so I could paint privately, without interruption, to focus on the task of embedding in a single painting all the subtle, mindless, radical and dangerous atrocities of the Obama administration.
Really? Atrocities? Whatever…
Yes Hal. Doing everything in your power to support the largest killer of unborn children in our nation is an atrocity. Didn’t you know?
Yeah, but I was thinking he was more upset about gay marriage and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. That painting is like peaking into a Fox News wet dream.
The link in this article is now broken, the painting can now be found at http://www.jonmcnaughton.com/artwork/view_zoom/423