Pilgrimage to Insanity.
From the artist:
This is the last painting of my Donald Trump series. It’s as much about us as it is about Trump. The composition was borrowed from Bob Jacksons photo of Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald. This image is part of the conversation about extreme solutions to the problem of out of control leaders. These ideas come up in discussions that everyday people have.
The background is a section of Francisco De Goya’s ‘The Pilgrimage the San Isidro’. Francisco’s work was part of his Black paintings, art critic Robert Hughes describes The Pilgrimage of San Isidro:” it’s a haunting, disturbing painting, a dark counterpoint to Goya’s sunny earlier painting of St Isidro meadow, this later work portrays a kind of crazed carnival procession, touched by madness and the devil”.
In ‘The Pilgrimage to Insanity’ Trump the central figure looks like he is emerging from Francisco De Goya’s chaotic scene. Trump is being tazed by a figure in blue gripping a newspaper, the look on Trump was taken from when he poked fun at a journalist with a disability. The words free speech, truth and justice can be seen on the newspaper.
Trump is being pulled along by Sarah Huckabee Sanders dressed in red. I agree with The New Republic Magazine: ‘She lies. She thinks her job is to discredit the news media, not to answer the public’s questions. Above all, she provides cover for her racist, despotic boss’. Sanders has no qualms about misleading the American people over and over — despite the oath she took to the country, not to the president.
There is much in this painting still to be interpreted by the viewer.
