April 7, 2014
WASHINGTON: "The people of India deeply love you," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared grandly (and questionably) to then President George Bush during a White House meeting in 2008.
Manmohan Singh's portrait is part of a portfolio of 30 world leaders George Bush has painted.
April 7, 2014
WASHINGTON: "The people of India deeply love you," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared grandly (and questionably) to then President George Bush during a White House meeting in 2008.
Manmohan Singh's portrait is part of a portfolio of 30 world leaders George Bush has painted.
The US President, with his matchless eloquence, was fond of describing Singh as a "good man." Singh will join Bush in retirement shortly, but the Indian Prime Minister evidently left enough of an impression with the US President that Bush has essayed a painting of Singh, bearded and bewhiskered, in an exhibition that opened in Dallas this weekend. The Singh portrait is part of a portfolio of 30 world leaders Bush has painted.
Bush's dalliance with painting has not been a secret. He has been at it for couple of years now after taking inspiration from an essay by Churchill titled "Painting as a pastime," suggested to him by Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis. In fact, former Indian ambassador to the US, Nirupama Rao, was among the first to get a sneak preview of his paintings when she called on him in Dallas last year. He had also showed off his new passion to Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, via an iPad, on a flight back from South Africa after the Nelson Mandela memorial last year.
But the scuttlebutt was that Bush had been painting his pets, assorted cats and dogs, and some landscapes. Last year, a hacker who went by the name Guccifer broke into the Bush family's private emails and found that he had begun painting portraits, including a self-portrait of himself in the shower while he was looking in the mirror. The leaks reportedly annoyed Bush, who would later tell NBC that it was an invasion of privacy. But he also revealed that he had done a self-portrait of himself in the bathroom in order to shock his instructor.
The instructor was Gail Norfleet, a Dallas painter who reportedly encouraged him to expand his horizons beyond dogs and cats. Bush then began painting world leaders he had interacted with, Russia's Vladimir Putin, Britain's Tony Blair, Manmohan Singh, and Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf among them. "I wanted to make sure the last chapters of my life are full, and painting, it turns out, would help occupy not only space, but kind of open my mind," the 43rd President told NBC Correspondent Jenna Bush Hager, who happens to be his daughter.
Critics panned both the interview and the paintings. "George W Bush paints like a beginning college art major," Mat Gleason of the Coagula Art Journal told CNN, "The haste in which these pictures appear to have been completed reveal an artist who wants to finish what he starts, pleased with delivering something good and pleasant instead of great and overwhelming." Another critic said the works appears to be of "someone who is trying to establish himself as a creative, introspective artist, but lacks both the technical chops or even knowledge of painting to make it something more than a hobby."
Bush himself was modest about his efforts, telling his daughter in the NBC interview that he is not a great artist, but he paints a lot because he wants to get better.
Margaret Spellings, President of the Bush Presidential Center in Dallas where the exhibits are on display said the paintings would help broaden the image of Bush and show "what it takes to be a personal diplomat." Incidentally, none of the foreign leaders who have been painted by Bush have seen their portraits.
But Manmohan Singh, now heading into retirement amid a crescendo of criticism about his leadership (or lack of it), can take heart from the fact that Bush is enjoying a generous bump in popularity post-retirement even if his shot at painting is being panned by critics. A Gallup poll last June showed he had close to a 50 per cent approval rating, a significant increase from the mid-30s shortly before he demitted office.
Courtesy: TNN
