Protest art: The Trump era’s instant Michelangelo?
“Big, shiny gold statues of Donald
Trump sound like they would be right up the president’s alley,” said Sarah
Cascone in
Artnet.com.
But Bryan
Buckley’s
Trump Statue Initiative aims to mock its subject, and the prominent director of TV commercials is doing that by having gold-painted actors re-enact some of Trump’s most infamous 2020 moments. One tableau that popped up in Washington, D.C., depicted the president cowering in a bunker; another showed him holding a Bible aloft while a police officer pummeled a Black Lives Matter protester. In Portland, Ore., the faux monuments portrayed federal officers throwing a protester into a van and Trump praying before a photo of accused sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. So far, the satirical jabs have only appeared in anti-Trump strongholds, but Buckley says that will change.