The presidential election is upon us. For this occasion, two longtime activist Maine artists – Whitefield-based Natasha Mayers and Portland-based Eva Rose Goetz – have pulled together “A Cautionary Tale” (through Election Day, Nov. 5) at Fort Hall Gallery in Brunswick.
Given the stark difference between the candidates and between the visions of America each promises to deliver, as well as the portentous exhibition title and the disturbing division among the American electorate, we might come to this show expecting something sober and ponderous.
So why is it that when we enter Fort Hall Gallery, we feel instead as if we’ve walked into a party? Certainly, opening night of this show was an actual party, brimming with a circus-like atmosphere. It featured acrobats, poetry readings, political poster painting and people making stump speeches on actual stumps wrapped in patriotic bunting (among them, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, while Sen. Angus King wandered around but didn’t speak). It was billed as a “Get Out the Vote” event, and by the looks of pictures from that evening, it was an all-out, family-friendly blast. If its purpose was to sway voters, I doubt that actually happened.
Even without the physical reverie, the show feels buoyant and fun. The place is popping with bright colors and artworks that ridicule Donald Trump and indict the white male patriarchy for the mess they’ve gotten us into. Goetz’s paintings take most direct aim at the Republican candidate, depicting him variously as a “Snake Oil Salesman,” a target for the childhood game Pin the Tail on the Donkey (“Pin in the Tail”), a bible thumper oblivious to societal outrage (“I Can’t Breathe,” which, of course, is a reference to the murder of George Floyd), and other distasteful characters. Regardless of political persuasion, there is a certain glee to be found in watching someone with such an inflated, disproportionate ego get his comeuppance.
As you’ve probably already guessed, there are no works here that take Kamala Harris to task. This is, unapologetically, a Trump-bashing exercise, MAGA audiences not invited. It’s precisely this partisan point of view, along with the colorful, cartoony renderings of the paintings, and the platitudinous pronouncements of the political posters hanging alongside the paintings, that dilute the potential power of the “A Cautionary Tale.” Lacking nuance, it feels as if this show is preaching to the converted. I daresay no Trump voter has probably crossed this threshold since it opened.
I am not taking sides. Anyone who knows me is aware of my political leanings and opinions. But, for instance, let’s take the focus on the white male patriarchy. It is not as though this is not a continuing reality. But it ignores a huge swath of voting white women who chose Trump over Biden in the last election. According to polling by the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) at Rutgers University, 57% of women overall voted for the Democratic candidate. But when analyzed for race variables, 44% of white women pulled the lever for Biden, while 55% did so for Trump. Conversely, 90% of Black female voters opted for Biden, while only 9% sided with Trump. This voter block isn’t budging either. The poll also found that 92% of women who supported Trump in 2020 intend to do so again this year.
Not to account for this phenomenon and attribute our world’s woes solely to male patriarchy and white privilege at this point seems at best a limited, perhaps even quaint, perspective. At worst it can be dangerously naïve. How, for instance, to explain the spectacle of Marjorie Taylor Greene? How, the show never asks, did she happen?
Focusing so resolutely and singularly on Trump also has its problems. It is just too facile. Goetz does include Vice President Pence in a couple of her paintings. But Donald Trump was not and is not an independent spontaneous occurrence. Fueling the divisive politics and rhetoric of the Trump presidency was an entire rogue’s gallery, including personalities such as the Rasputin-like Steve Bannon, a Republican-controlled Congress and – it would seem counterintuitively – figures like Joe Manchin III, who often crossed the aisle to vote for Trump’s policies. And what of the Supreme Court’s radical shift to the right? It’s simplistic to harp solely on the perpetually caricature-ready Trump. He’s an easy target.
Which is certainly not to say that the show does not have merit. There are several works that are very effective. Mayers offers, for instance, “Losing My Head,” a painting of, literally, a discombobulated head being held in the hands of a figure while everything around her whirls about it in centrifugal chaos. It accurately conveys the sense of emotional and spiritual overwhelm that many people expressed during the Trump presidency, and it recalls, in a way, Frida Kahlo’s out-of-body paintings with organs tethered to, but not actually in, her body.
Mayers’ painting “Mountain” – a heap of men in corporate suits – suggests a garbage pile or the prospect of a bonfire, the mound of troublemakers a kind of funeral pyre. Or there is her “Roulette,” which creates the gambling wheel from militaristic five-pointed stars and more corporate suits (headless, I imagine, to suggest how they’ve lost the organ that imparts the ability to comprehend what they’ve done). This latter painting mixes authoritarian imagery into a composition reminiscent of Marsden Hartley’s homages to his dead Nazi lover. And “Eddy” suggests a huge fishkill, though here, again, what has been left to die in the deadly shallows are more corporate suits.
The message is the same throughout: Corporate greed and a surfeit of testosterone are destroying our planet and humanity in general. But these work because, like all effective satire, they come with a savage bite. Their veiled allusions to mass execution tread into forbidden space, whereas other works feel more jokey and/or predictable.
Goetz’s paintings also have a kind of naïve execution inspired by folk art. Their surfaces are covered in large dots that appear at times behind the Trump figure and at other times become integral to the figure’s form, as though they are a rash that’s broken out all over his skin. Flies are also a recurring motif, suggesting a putrid stench that attracts them to Trump’s face and body. The flies push the envelope by conjuring something rotten and fetid – moral decay, say, or the death of old systems and ideals – again luring us in through deceptively accessible imagery only to feel the deep cut of razor-sharp satire.
Others, such as “Shake Him Down” – Uncle Sam holding Trump’s feet and shaking out the former president’s unpaid taxes, while behind is a White House flying an upside-down American flag – feel more like a political placard than a painting.
In a way, the show simultaneously embodies the divisiveness it tries to skewer by being so partisan. Liberals will be delighted and probably walk through the show giggling. Conservatives, should they even come, will be angry and likely find the show offensive. Subtlety and nuance are mostly absent and not, in fact, even among the show’s conceptual intentions. Which is fine, of course. It’s just not likely to sway anyone’s thinking before the election. It’s activism, for sure, but one operating in a vacuum.
Jorge S. Arango has written about art, design and architecture for over 35 years. He lives in Portland. He can be reached at: jorge@jsarango.com
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