The overstayed welcome

George W. Bush has (mercifully, for some) forsaken politics—for painting.

Now before you start trying to get him to come up from Texas and do a celebrity repaint of your shed, you should be aware that I’m talking about painting of the artistic type—portraiture, to be precise. Bush has been taking lessons, and has recently mounted an exhibtion of portraits of world leaders he has known. The paintings are easy to find on the web.

In a video to accompany the exhibition, Bush jokes that he must have “a Rembrandt trapped” in his body; although he notes the harsh fact that “the signature is worth more than the painting.” One critic, New York artist Paul Chan, tends to agree more with the latter sentiment than the former. “The paintings are kind of primitive and amateurish, which is kind of how I remember him as president,” says Chan. Ouch. Kind of unkind.

It’s not my job to be an art critic. But I’d say the portrait of Stephen Harper makes him look like a smiling Ted Kennedy, and doesn’t work. I’d also say that the portrait of the Dalai Lama fails to capture his luminescence. However, the portrait of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi seems to me to evoke the man’s satisfaction with the privileges of power and wealth, and to hint at his knowledge of still darker secrets that he anticipates employing to his advantage.

And I find his portrait of Vladimir Putin riveting. Far from looking into his eyes and seeing his soul, as Bush is reported to have said about Putin, Bush appears to have re vised his opinion to agree with his former Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates: he sees a stone-cold killer instead.

Well done, Mr. Bush. You’ve found your passion. All of which gets me to thinking: what if the arts were used as an inducement to politicians who might be thinking of overstaying their welcome? We don’t have term limits to work with, as the Americans do. What if, instead of launching lawsuits and conflict of interest investigations against, say, the mayor of Toronto, people simply encouraged him to take a course in modern dance? The next thing you know, he would be spending his days at the barre instead of in the bars. And the next thing after that, he would be so wrapped up in his chosen art form that he would be apologizing and saying “folks, I’m sorry, but I’ve had it as your mayor; I’ve got to follow my passion.”

And what about Stephen Harper? Not even the grubbiest scandal seems to have had much impact on his determination to stick around in order to serve Canadians. Yet Harper is a published author. Why couldn’t a publisher (or a funding crowd) take one for the Canadian electorate, and offer him a three-book deal to write about anything he wanted to? If I were Harper, I’d jump at the chance to write books instead of having to make exploding Senate appointments. He could pen an action hero suspense novel about a man who, surrounded by incompetents, single-handedly took on the forces of evil and overcame them. Or he could compile a book of poetry, all penned by former Conservative politicians, with a provocative title such as “50 Shades of Blue.” Or he could continue mining the hockey vein with a book that takes an indepth look at the history of the goal crease.

In fact, what if instead of fattening the pension benefit for politicians the longer they stayed on the job, the public were to fund mandatory pottery classes? Wouldn’t everything be just that much peachier if they were tapped on the shoulder, early in the game, by a higher calling in the arts?

Of course, the same could be said for some unfortunates stuck in the arts field when they’d be better suited to something else. For example, and while I have no personal views on the subject, take (away, please) Canadian chanteur Justin Bieber. Perhaps while he is undergoing his two-year probation for egging his neighbour’s house, and as part of his anger management therapy, he might be introduced to a subject—any subject, say chicken farming or actuarial science or ventriloquy—that might ignite his passion and lead him to abandon his pop music career and associated deliquency.

Perhaps, just perhaps—and with apologies to Pierre Trudeau—there is a case to be made for passion. At least as an antidote to the overstayed welcome.

dsimmonds@wellingtontimes.ca