The Cloakroom culls some reviews of Bush's intimate self-portrait:
New York:
"More impressive than the painting's aesthetic quality is the
soul-searching introspection evident in the scene. Bush, slightly
hunched, is standing out of the water, staring off into the corner of
the shower, as if contemplating past sins that can never be washed away,
no matter how much soap you use and how hard you scrub."
American Prospect: "The vanity of an older man who has maintained a lanky frame is there — he paints his naked torso, finely shadowing those 66-year-old back muscles with pride, still taut from years of brush-clearing and bill signing. And yet, he can't seem to look at himself in the mirror. Nor can he escape himself it seems — the mirror's reflection is relentless, inescapable. Whatever your take, it's clear that there's a lot more than just singing going on in that shower. Even in the quiet inner sanctum of the bathroom, where a man is just a man, George W. Bush cannot escape his past."
National Journal: "But it's the paintings that have caught the imagination of the public and of the critics, some of whom profess to like the former president's work even as they patronize it. It's because a sensitive Bush, an artistic Bush, a man who paints himself nude and vulnerable, is not the Bush we thought we knew. Although, of course, he did marry a librarian who loves to read. So maybe we should have suspected an artistic temperament all along?"
American Prospect: "The vanity of an older man who has maintained a lanky frame is there — he paints his naked torso, finely shadowing those 66-year-old back muscles with pride, still taut from years of brush-clearing and bill signing. And yet, he can't seem to look at himself in the mirror. Nor can he escape himself it seems — the mirror's reflection is relentless, inescapable. Whatever your take, it's clear that there's a lot more than just singing going on in that shower. Even in the quiet inner sanctum of the bathroom, where a man is just a man, George W. Bush cannot escape his past."
National Journal: "But it's the paintings that have caught the imagination of the public and of the critics, some of whom profess to like the former president's work even as they patronize it. It's because a sensitive Bush, an artistic Bush, a man who paints himself nude and vulnerable, is not the Bush we thought we knew. Although, of course, he did marry a librarian who loves to read. So maybe we should have suspected an artistic temperament all along?"
