Henri Matisse, L'Escargot, 1953

Alma Thomas, Watusi (Hard Edge), 1963

The Republican hate machine and the mobs they incite have hardly been reticent on any "issue" which they manufacture or exaggerate in an attempt to bring Obama down. Witness the "Birthers", the "Deathers", the "Tea Party-ers", the "Great White Hopers", and the acolytes of Glenn Beck who embrace his charges of racism against the president.

As reported in Media Matters:

Given the gleeful mocking of President Obama over Chicago's failed effort to host the 2016 Olympics, and shameless smears of his unexpected Nobel Peace Prize, let's pause and ask: Is there anything conservatives won't turn into a cudgel to bludgeon the president? Take, for example, the art hanging on the White House walls.

The particular issue that Conservative websites have latched onto is the similarity between Watusi (Hard Edge), a 1963 Alma Thomas canvas selected for display in the White House, and L'Escargot (The Snail), a late (1953) cutout by Henri Matisse, which Thomas viewed at MoMA.

Here are snippets I posted on the New York Magazine site re: the art borrowed for display in the Obama White House.

Alma Thomas, Watusi (Hard Edge)

Comment on: Obama’s Startling White House Art

Deitch did not foist a Kehinde Wiley on the Obamas, as previously speculated on these pages. There's also no Basquiat, Carrie Mae Weems, Adrian Piper, Gary Simmons, Mark Bradford, Jacob Lawrence and countless other black American artists (including Kara Walker). Ligon, while "prickly" and "challenging", still deals with identity from a politely subversive text-based perspective.

Edward Ruscha’s I Think I’ll ...

From the London Times Online comes a list of artworks borrowed by the Obama White House from museums and galleries in the Washington D.C. littoral. Here's the text, with interspersed online images:

A cultural revolution is under way at the White House, where the Obamas are decorating their living quarters with modern and abstract artwork.

Out have gone traditional landscapes, portraits and still life paintings. In have come new pieces by contemporary African-American and Native American artists, with bold colours, odd shapes and squiggly lines.

By an executive order ironically announced on Election Day, the Bush administration opened up 360,000 acres of land in Utah to oil and natural gas drilling, scheduled to begin in December. One can only begin to wonder about the favors being paid back by this lame duck cowboy wannabee, and the harm he can still do as his powers diminish and his days are waning. It recalls Saruman in Lord of the Rings: even after he is dethroned and banished from his fortress, he still harbors enough residual malice to ravage the Shire.

Hendrik Hertzberg makes a good point about the hypocrisy of the Republican candidates trying to stir up fear of Obama by labeling him a socialist. It's one more example of desperate McCain/Palin doublethink as their defeat looms ever closer. The whole piece is worth reading, but I excerpt the conclusion below.

Tonight at the liquor store on Franklin Ave. and Eastern Parkway (it was a bad day at work and I needed some fortification) the man in front of me, after buying a bottle of white rum (he said he wasn't prejudice) started going off about Obama and why he wasn't supporting him.