I Will Never Unsee George W. Bush’s 9/11 Paintings, and I Regrettably Wish the Same for You

Downtime By Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Heather Schwedel? Sept 11, 20265:49 PM George W. Bush on Friday. Pool/Getty Images Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. When George W. Bush decided to take up painting later in life, he could have played it safe, with puppies and children and landscapes. He’s done some of that, but he’s also consistently surprised people—there were those nudes that were discovered in an email hack, and after that, the provocative decision to paint portraits of world leaders like Vladimir Putin and Tony Blair. And now Dubya the shock artist has done it again: Just in time for the 25th anniversary, his latest paintings depict his experience of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath. Bush shared four of his paintings on Instagram on Friday, writing, “Twenty-five years ago, the actions of an enemy revealed the spirit of the American people. These and other paintings are my reflections of this solemn anniversary.” He added that the work will be on display this month at his presidential center in Dallas. The first painting he shared was the most notable, because it’s a painted version of a well-known-to-the-point-of-memedom photo of Bush on 9/11, the moment when his then–White House chief of staff Andrew Card interrupted a visit with elementary school students to whisper in his ear that America was under attack. Online, this is commonly rendered with a caption of dialogue that goes, “Sir, a second plane has hit the Twin Towers.” In brush strokes that are spare, sketchy, and childlike, Bush manages to perfectly capture his countenance in the original photo—he’s gotten much better at painting since those nudes. (I would contend that he’s got a stronger style and point of view than another up-and-coming artist from the political realm, Hunter Biden.) Still, it makes sense to question why a painting of such a somber moment is so colorful, almost whimsical. The other paintings in the gallery are of smoke rising above the New York City skyline, a hand holding a police badge, and a group of people standing on top of a building holding an American flag. What exactly is Bush doing here, sharing his own interpretation of a meme of himself? Online, some users called out the paintings as disrespectful and even ghoulish; one person pointed out that Bush is coming perilously close to fulfilling a 2014 Onion headline: “George W. Bush Debuts New Paintings of Dogs, Friends, Ghost of Iraqi Child That Follows Him Everywhere.” Bush doesn’t deserve to get to have feelings about a moment he fumbled so badly, this line of argument goes, nor should he get the chance to rehabilitate his image given how he responded. At worst, the paintings make it look like Bush is treating a profound national crisis as his own personal trauma, as if all the people who died in the war on terrorism matter less to him than how embarrassing it is that he has to deal with being a meme. But I’m not sure Bush is self-aware enough to know that he’s a meme, that a lot of people consider him a war criminal (he’d get some of this if he reads his comments, though, to be fair), or that his ugly Putin painting could have had real geopolitical consequences. He’s just a dumb guy who likes to paint juvenile-looking paintings. It’s hard to hate on that. Yes, he could and should be doing work in his retirement to reckon with and repent for his sins, save the Republican Party, and make the world a better place, but he’s also not hurting anyone by farting around with some oil paints. Bush’s painting hobby doesn’t change any of the harm he did in his presidency, nor does it rehabilitate anything, but the one little thing it does do is make him look comparatively human next to our current president. It’s impossible to imagine Donald Trump taking up such a peaceful, unremunerative hobby, just as it’s impossible to imagine him genuinely appreciating art for its own sake, much less attempting his own. When he leaves office, Trump will not paint, or start doing morning pages à la The Artist’s Way, or champion an important cause like slowing global warming, and we’ll all be longing for the days of an ex-president who kept to himself and his paintbrushes. If Bush’s weird little simpleton paintings annoy you, so be it, but I say let him express himself—and embarrass himself—to his heart’s content. Art George W. Bush Hobbies Sept. 11