Bad paintings of Barack Obama

If you're an epochal historical figure you are in some sense going to be all things to all people, and it stands to reason that some of those people will be painters, and of those, some quotient will be bad painters. Which is what makes badpaintingsofbarackobama.com not just a hoot but culturally inevitable. It's ultra-minimalist, as online galleries go -- just a bad painting of Obama per page, with a neat little drop shadow added to give the images an extra shot of hilarious self-importance. Some of them actually aren't bad (at least not to my untrained eye -- I don't know a lot about bad painting, but I know it when I see it); some are either goofy (like this one of Obama looking like Mr. Roarke from "Fantasy Island") or disturbing (like this one of Obama looking like The Rock). Some of them are actually sort of moving. Taken individually they're easy to dismiss. But click through the site for a while and something unexpected happens: Your image of Obama begins to lift and separate from the mire and chatter of the 24-hour news cycle, and you begin to see him again as (perhaps) you once did -- the repository of a whole lot of different, and different-looking, hopes.

• [bklynchris]

  How ’bout bad paintings, period. Actually, this painting is so bad its good. F*ck the tacos, what about the jockey underwear?

  • [Steaming Pile]

    Yeah, what’s the deal with the underwear?

• [Zergonapal]

  I think its interesting that the one consistent about the paintings is Obama’s smile.
  Oh and number four made me laugh out loud, someone has a serious crush on Obama.

• [Chinese Jet Pilot]

  I find these Obama paintings quite honest and charming in a folk-art way.

  I snapped this lovely 3D photo of an Obama painting and its creator.

• [Anonymous]

  Hey, there’s a work-in-progress photo of Alex Grey’s Obama portrait in there as well.

  http://iamchriscollins.com/badpaintingsofbarackobama/images//3.jpg
  http://www.alexgrey.com/obama.html

• [ian71]

  Wasn’t this site already blogged on here a while back?

  Also, tacos?? WTF??

• [rrh]

  http://iamchriscollins.com/badpaintingsofbarackobama/images//4.jpg

  Now that’s hot.

• [Anonymous]

  Underpants?

• [Ned613]

  Anon@#3 “Underpants?” Evidently change [of underwear] we can believe in.

• [Anonymous]

  this reminds me of david byrne’s painting for the cover of “little creatures.” i think it’s the underwear.

  • [jere7my]

    Anon #4, Byrne didn’t paint the cover of Little Creatures. That was the Reverend Howard Finster, an outsider artist from Georgia. If you like that kind of thing, Google [outsider art].

• [Anonymous]

  I don’t think any of these paintings are bad, and I’m curious to know what a “good” painting of Barack Obama would look like.