The Art of Bore

In case you've found yourself wondering where our most beloved ex-preznit ambled off ta, welp, apparently some hacker and Teh Media can answer that li'l riddle for ya. Supposedly "liberals" are unglued about this, but clearly there's nothing to get bent about either way. He's no John Wayne Gacy, is he? Hell, he ain't even Andy Warhol.

Already some art uh-fishy-nachos have attempted some snarkonalysis, but there's very little point to any of that. You've probably heard (via The Departed) the urban legend about Freud saying that the Irish cannot be psychoanalyzed. Well, in all seriousness, I believe you could make the same claim about George W. Bush.

I freely admit to being a total philistine when it comes to art appreciation; there are certainly plenty of individual pieces, artists, and even movements that I can identify as "liking" or "disliking", with some reasonable explanation as to why. Beyond simple notes on color and composition, however, I can't really expound much. Either I can identify skill, technique, passion, and vision, or not.

And let's face it, if the two paintings shown above had come from anyone else -- or no one of any note at all -- nobody would be talking about them in any respect. They are not noteworthy in any particular way, near as I can tell; neither good nor awful, merely there.

One finds nothing at all in the way of passion, vision, ambition, or really even any identifiable emotion or thought here. They're just glimpses of random days, sketched by a hobbyist of unique means but modest skill. Scenes From A Washroom. Who knows, maybe they're part of a series in progress; perhaps the third piece of the Homebody Triptych is Self-Portrait of Upper-Decker. You probably won't want to "download" that one (see what I did there?).

Looked at that way, perhaps these newly-hacked objets d'art really do qualify as a portal into the interior life of the artist, insofar that that's pretty much all it is, all it ever was. George shaves in the shower. Then he watches his feet in the bathtub. It's not like he was going to paint Guernica with Fallujah as stand-in. Himself never was much for self-reflection; these are the musings of a man who is almost completely bereft of uncertainty, or even curiosity.

I mean, really, what did anyone think George W. Bush would do with his post-presidency existence -- build homes for the homeless; give back to the world in gratitude for his impossible luck in life; lend his diplomatic expertise and gravitas to a tumultuous planet; learn to play Bach's Sonatas and Partitas on the violin? It's a small miracle he hasn't yet guested on Celebrity Apprentice or Duck Dynasty.

[Update 2/9/13 3:45PM PST:  'Scuse the post title change, I knew I could come up with a better one,given enough time.]