The Trump administration said on Friday that she had moved a portrait of former President Barack Obama in a corridor of the White House and replaced him with a pop-art painting by President Trump pumping his fist after the assassination attempt last year on the campaign campaign in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The decoration mixture is not uncommon in the White House, where portraits are often turned. But the new striking work of art representing Mr. Trump aroused criticism of certain presidential historians, who did not remember another president suspended a painting of himself during his mandate at the White House.
As a rule, paintings from presidents and first ladies are suspended from the White House after leaving his duties, historians said.
A spokesperson for Mr. Obama refused to comment.
The portrait of Mr. Obama, who was revealed in the room is during the administration of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., shows the former president in a dark costume and a silver tie, standing with his hands in his pockets. The background is white; The portrait was based on photographs taken by the artist Robert McCURDY.
The new painting shows that Trump kissed by a team of secret service agents while an American flag swells in a cloudless blue sky behind him. Red sequences cross his face.
The work illustrates a scene similar to the fixed images taken after a potential assassin fired To Mr. Trump, hitting him in his ear during a campaign speech in Pennsylvania in July. The words pronounced by a provocateur Mr. Trump after the shooting – “Fight!” Fight! Fight! ” – has become a rally cry for his supporters.
Mr. Trump’s painting is on an opposite wall of that of Mr. Obama, said the White House, adding that Trump had been placed on the spot for the last presidential portrait.
Karoline Leavitt, press secretary of the White House, said in a statement that “the executive manor is the home of the president, and he has the right to make changes like the other presidents have done in the past”.
“President Trump has decided to temporarily display this painting, which represents a pivotal moment in history when he almost lost his life,” she added. “Only the New York Times would find a problem with this.”
Ted Widmer, presidential historian of the University of the city of New York and former speech editor for President Bill Clinton, said that he was surprised to see the new work of art.
“It seems just sticky,” said Widmer. “It feels different from our tradition to venerate the distinguished holders of the two -part office – and to go to a new direction to walk by looking at images of yourself all day.”
But Julian E. Zelizer, presidential historian of Princeton, said that the move fits into a model.
“In the second term, it is not only a question of winning the White House,” said Mr. Trump Zelizer. “He has always had an intense animosity for President Obama, until the early 2010s. And I think this time, he really wants to show that he has – in his mind – has supplanted him.”
Barbara A. Perry, professor of presidential studies at the University of Virginia, said that she had found the style of painting, with blood on Mr. Trump’s face, in particular “strange”.
“Can you imagine Gerald Ford having a portrait painted from himself?” Ms. Perry said about an assassination attempt against Ford, the 38th president in 1975. She added: “It would be considered lacking in the past days.”
