Donald Trump, the statesman as artist?

Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories

Jon McNaughton, the painter from Utah who has been described as the ‘unofficial artist of the Trump administration’, has produced what may be his most fawning work yet. This is no mean feat, in Rakewell’s opinion, when one remembers such canvases as MAGA Ride, in which the president ‘manoeuvres through a corrupt Washington DC’ atop a stars-and-stripes bedecked motorcycle.

And yet, as Twitter discovered with glee yesterday, The Masterpiece trumps all. Having set up easel in the nave of an improbably narrow cathedral, the president-cum-maestro lifts the curtain on his most recent creation – a blotchy pastiche of Monet’s Nymphéas, said by McNaughton to represent ‘how history will remember this presidency’.

Presented with a canvas this nearly blank, the Twitter brigade needed little invitation to step in:

Some offered suggestions as to where the president might find inspiration for his next creation….

…while others couldn’t see further than the president’s right thumb:

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