Trump l'oeil: How does Trump rate as an artist?
Trump's artistic skills are in the spotlight after The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump allegedly contributed a suggestive drawing and lewd poem for Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday in 2003. Trump denied having anything to do with the page, but in his denial, he told an undisputable lie: 'I never wrote a picture in my life,' he told The Journal.
Trump has, in fact, made many pictures in his life, and the description of the medium used to make the drawing reportedly sent to Epstein—a heavy marker— just so happens to be his medium of choice. Say what you will about the inconsistencies between his words, politics, and actions, but Trump has a consistent, distinctive artistic style.
Trump created marker-made doodles showing recurring motifs of city skylines for charity auctions throughout the 2000s, when he hosted NBC's The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentic e. 'It takes me a few minutes to draw something. In my case, it's usually a building or a cityscape of skyscrapers, and then I sign my name. But it raises thousands of dollars to help the hungry in New York through the Capuchin Food Pantries Ministry,' he wrote in his 2008 book, .
Far from trompe l'oeil (French for 'fools the eye'), a style in which objects are depicted with photographically realistic detail, one of Trump's doodles of the Empire State Building is filled in with sharp black squiggles that resemble his own sharp, jagged signature, while a 2006 sketch of the George Washington Bridge stands apart from the rest and proves Trump has more artistic skill than he might let on. His sketch of the bridge shows a sense of depth and angles.
Viewed as a body of work, most of Trump's sketches are rudimentary and his skylines blocky and simple ('Art may not be my strong point,' he admitted in Trump Never Give Up), but they share an aesthetic. And judging Trump's work alongside the art of other presidents—from presidential doodles to former President George W. Bush's post-presidency oil paintings —it's clear that his style is singular.
'It's sort of surprising that Trump's doodles show a bit of artistic talent,' David Greenberg, a journalism and media studies professor at Rutgers University and author of books including Presidential Doodles, tells Fast Company. 'I'd put him in maybe the top third of presidents in his doodling. Of course, it's hard to say. He's no Herbert Hoover, that's for sure.' The National Archives called Hoover 'among America's greatest doodling presidents.'
Is there a market for Trump to make a name for himself as an artist out of office? Still, like with a painting by, say, Khloe Kardashian, Trump's doodles aren't valuable for their artistic merit, but for the artist's famous name. Trump's Empire State Building drawing sold at auction for $100 in 1995 for a charity; by 2017, when he was president, it resold for $16,000. By this measure, Trump's potential value as an artist has never been higher. More famous than ever, Trump could do worse than an art career.
The super-early-rate deadline for Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Awards is this Friday, July 25, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
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