Twilight Language: Twilight Language in Andy Thomas' Paintings

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Twilight Language in Andy Thomas' Paintings

There is twilight language in the White House, and I'm not sure President Donald Trump even realized it.

On Sunday, October 14, 2018, President Trump touched on a wide array of topics during his interview with 60 Minutes hosted by CBS reporter Lesley Stahl. Besides all the subjects, what got some attention was the painting on the wall of the White House room where the interview took place.

Donald Trump has hung an Andy Thomas painting of past Republican presidents hanging out with Donald Trump in the Trump White House. As 60 Minutes documented, Thomas’ The Republican Club was there, in the background of the dining room.

Andy Thomas' The Republican Club, with President Trump.

Grand Ol' Gang.

Callin' the Blue.

Thomas' previous Republican paintings.

True Blues - Democratic Presidents

Callin' The Red

Thomas' The Democratic Club (directly above) and other paintings are populated by Democratic Presidents.

But someone else is coming to join them.

Who is that?

Some feel that Andy Thomas painted Senator Kamala Harris in the background (at least for the Democrats).

There’s a shadowy female figure approaching the table, just as there is in his most recent painting of Democratic presidents playing poker, “The Democratic Club.” Thomas explained the symbolism on his website:

“That will be the first Republican female president and the first Democratic female president. … As I was doing the painting, I was thinking that these guys are kind of intimidating in a way. That’s the kind of woman that will be our first woman president; she’ll walk right up to that table.
A woman who walks up to Donald Trump’s table without throwing a drink in his face is probably not going to be a great president, but kudos to Thomas for sneaking a feminist message into Donald Trump’s Presidential Dining Room. In the past, Frederick Judd Waugh’s Rough Sea at Bailey’s Island, Maine, hung on that wall. (Source.)

Before that, Alvan Fisher’s Indian Guides hung there, under both Obama and Bush:

The classy version has the following as a precursor: Porcelain of Capodimonte: Game Poker. The creation of Bari. Master Volta.

Of course, this entire discussion has recalled other paintings of poker players, as follows.

Dogs Playing Poker, by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, refers collectively to an 1894 painting, a 1903 series of sixteen oil paintings commissioned by Brown & Bigelow to advertise cigars, and a 1910 painting. All eighteen paintings in the overall series feature anthropomorphized dogs, but the eleven in which dogs are seated around a card table have become well known in the United States as examples of kitsch art in home decoration.

Critic Annette Ferrara has described Dogs Playing Poker as "indelibly burned into ... the American collective-schlock subconscious ... through incessant reproduction on all manner of pop ephemera."

The first painting, Coolidge's 1894 Poker Game (above), realized $658,000 at a Sotheby's New York sale on November 18, 2015.

Poker or pool with dogs paintings are linked to the Andy Thomas paintings of politicians playing poker or pool.

The female approaching motif shows that soon this will change the whole male club atmosphere.

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Postscript

I mentioned on Facebook that it seems to not be a coincidence that Andy Thomas shows Abraham Lincoln seated, in two of his three paintings, from the back, from the position known during Lincoln's assassination. This position matches what we find in several paintings of the Lincoln murder at Ford's Theater.

From John Wilkes "Booth's point of view," notes artist Jeffrey Vallance. Vallance also posted the following composite image using Thomas' Lincoln view.

The Big Betrayal by Jack T. Chick. This is a 64-page graphic comic book expanding on the theory that the Jesuits were behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Vallance posted the cover of the Chick book next to the image of Lincoln from the Andy Thomas painting. Makes sense.

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Andy Thomas is a well-known artist of Western scenes.

American Storytellers shows Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Ronald Reagan, Charles Russell, Frederic Remington, Norman Rockwell, Ben Franklin, Ernest Hemingway, Buffalo Bill, and Teddy Roosevelt.