‘Donaldism’ – a new art movement to give Trump the hump

Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories.

Say what you like about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, but his contribution to the world of contemporary art cannot be underestimated.

As previously reported here, Ilma Gore’s all too modest portrait of the erstwhile Apprentice host caused a media storm earlier this year, resulting in a physical attack on the artist. Elsewhere, the t.Rutt art collective have decorated a pile of cinder blocks on the border between Mexico and the USA. They then billed the Mexican president for their trouble in a (just possibly satirical) nod to the Donald’s pronouncement that his proposed border wall should be paid for by the Mexican government.

Now, fresh from painting Hull blue, the photographer Spencer Tunick has decided to come on board with this new artistic movement, which Rakewell feels duty bound to dub ‘Donaldism’. Earlier this week, Tunick encouraged more than 100 women to pose nude with mirrors outside Republican National Convention in Cleveland, ‘welcoming’ Trump to the event. Alas, it seems unlikely the event was staged for the prospective President’s enjoyment. ‘He is a loser,’ Tunick says of Trump.

What, though, of the strangely coiffed mogul’s own aesthetic tastes? According to a piece in Vanity Fair by Mark Bowden, who spent a weekend with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in 1996:

‘He showed off the gilded interior of his [private] plane – calling me closer to inspect a Renoir on its walls, beckoning me to lean in closely to see… what? The luminosity of the brush strokes? The masterly use of color? No. The signature. “Worth $10 million,” he told me.’

That, as Trump himself might put it, is the Art of the Deal.

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