Election Special
Tributes to Trump
As a follow-up to my recent paid subscriber post on photomontage, honoring John Heartfield, this post includes a selection of political art from my website [1]. In interest of transparency, and to reach out to all voters, a selection of images honoring our fine GOP gentleman is offered. They are presented below in roughly reverse chronological order.
Tangled up in orange was inspired by the public domain mug shot taken after he was arrested in Georgia for election interference. It is a reminder that he is due to be sentenced just after the election for the 34 felonies of which he was convicted by a jury of his peers in New York. (Not to mention the upcoming trial in Washington DC.) The series of images was intended to depict his mental devolution, but as it turns out I didn't correctly predict how far it would go. The devolution was produced using a Python code originally designed for use in fluid dynamics, to visualize the transition from organized flow into chaos. Fitting, n'est-ce pas?
In this image I've taken the liberty to correct some faulty details in the original, details that displace the deliberate distortions in the act of political theater. The book from his night stand (per his statement) and showing his true national loyalty, inter alia. It is not a deep fake, because the appearance of his face has been altered (improved, I think) using the same modified fluid dynamics visualization code as in the previous image. Originally I entitled this work "The new gospel" but in light of the cult that has grown up around him, I changed the name. Also in contention was "The anti-Christ".
This picture is part of a series I did in 2020 (also featuring Putin, Xi, bin Salman and Bolsonaro). It celebrates his support for the 2017 fascist demonstration in Charlottesville [2] and for his response to the COVID 19 pandemic, in which the USA led the world in deaths. As someone who lost a family member to COVID I have zero tolerance for the deniers, and hold them at least partially responsible for her death, because they chose to follow the ridiculous utterances of the scientifically incompetent egomaniac rather than basing their behavior on logical reasoning.
The above was inspired by a series of paintings by Maria Lassnig, and is a reaction to the 2016 campaign. It exists as a photo and a video; in the video the sound track is of his wisdom, which is to say white noise. Pictured are his great enablers, Mark Zuckerberg, Vladimir Putin, and Robert Mercer. Mercer may not be familiar to you, but it was his idea to hire Cambridge Analytica who in turn posted the *free* psychology test on Facebook that enabled them to select people with high dark triad scores (from OCEAN) and their followers for targeting. Were I to do a 2024 version, Zuckerberg would be edged out by Elon Musk, and Mercer by Peter Thiel.
This image, produced for the 2016 election, borrowed both its title and concept from a series by Ai Wei Wei. The building is in Chicago.
This photocollage is also from the 2016 campaign. Contrary to possible expectations, the Trump-Clinton embrace is not a product of my manipulations but rather from a picture in the fawning New York Times of the reception after the Melania wedding. I did paste in her left arm waving to the storm troopers below from another picture; thank goodness she wore that yellow dress often! In case you are wondering, the building at Archistraße 12 was designed by Albert Speer, and the balcony was specifically for his benefactor. Were I to do an update, I'd replace Hillary with J.D., and maybe decorate the balcony with a Hakenkreuz flag for the benefit of the less perceptive among the audience.
Notes
[2] Lest you think I was taking unfair liberties in composing my photomontage, kindly refer to the lead image at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally
Oh, so fabulous. I remember seeing a good number of these images, but it is good to see them in one place on the eve of his Big Ouster from public mention, except to link his name to "Inmate #666."
The image series of devolution using the mugshot reminds me, and in particular the last several, of a fitting line from Animal Farm: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."