Though former President George W. Bush's painting technique seems to have improved in the past few months, he has lost is artistic edge, says New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz.
Saltz gave a
positive review of Bush's paintings when they were first revealed earlier this year through a hacked cell phone of the former president calling them "'simple" and "awkward, but in wonderful, unselfconscious, intense ways."
Bush presented "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno with a portrait of Leno when he appeared on the
show Tuesday night. It was much more realistic than the earlier paintings of himself in the bathtub. Newer pictures he painted of dogs also looked more lifelike than earlier dog portraits.
One of the early pictures showed the presidential dog looking wistfully into the gates of the White House, leading some to speculate the dog represented Bush himself looking back at his days as the leader of the free world.
Saltz was interviewed Wednesday on CNN's "
The Lead with Jake Tapper" and said Bush "took a step backwards."
"Before, he was painting things that the camera cannot see, Saltz said "Now, he's just giving us a much more conventional photographic realism, and there's kind of no insight."
Saltz said he doesn't agree with Bush politically on anything, but he'd like to talk to the former president and advise him on his art.
"You're no Rembrandt, but now you're just becoming a hack," Saltz said he'd tell Bush. "And I don't want any painter to be a hack – even George W. Bush."
If Bush goes back to his earlier work, Saltz said he would be glad to write about it.
"He said this thing that everybody in the art world agrees with: Art changed my life. I take painting seriously. … I agree with George W. Bush on those two things."
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