A Warhol Christmas at the White House

When it comes to art, the right-wing anti-Obama crowd hasn't had a very good year. Repeated efforts to gin up outrage in a manufactured culture war have either fallen flat or proved downright embarrassing. (You can see some of them here, here and here.)

The latest fiasco is the Great Christmas Ornament Scandal.

On Tuesday, Andrew Breitbart's Big Government blog got its knickers in a twist over one of the Obama White House's myriad Christmas trees. (Big Government is a sibling to Breitbart's Big Hollywood blog, which cranked up a paranoid fantasy about the National Endowment for the Arts a few months back.) The blaring "EXCLUSIVE" led with a blurry photo of a decoupage Christmas ornament adorned with the face of Chinese Communist dictator, Mao Zedong.

"Of course, Mao has his place in the White House," Big Government wailed about the GCOS, taking the Obama-as-socialist meme out for a yuletide spin.

Except, it wasn't exactly Mao. It was Andy Warhol's "Mao."

The image is one of a very large series of silkscreen paintings and prints the late Pop artist made of Mao. Warhol's parody transformed the leader of the world's most populous nation into a vapid superstar -- the most famous of the famous. The portrait photo from Mao's Little Red Book is tarted up with lipstick, eye-shadow and other Marilyn Monroe-style flourishes.

Where did the Christmas decoration come from?

"We took about 800 ornaments left over from previous administrations," First Lady Michelle Obama explained in an earlier press release about getting the White House ready for the holidays, "we sent them to 60 local community groups throughout the country, and asked them to decorate them to pay tribute to a favorite local landmark and then send them back to us for display here at the White House."

The precise source of the Warhol ornament is not known. But Warhol's Maos are in art museum collections from coast to coast, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago (whose painting most resembles the ornament image) and both the County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Not surprisingly, Pittsburgh's Andy Warhol Museum has several.

Oh, and at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, the National Gallery of Art has 21 different versions of Warhol's "Mao." Twenty-one. Wait until Big Government bloggers find out about the Communist takeover of the National Gallery.

In a political era when the lunatic fringe has relentlessly caricatured the president of the United States as a pinko, an ornament-maker somewhere in America apparently thought a satirical painting of a socialist was an ideal "favorite local landmark." I can't say as I blame him or her.

But still another layer of unwitting comedy percolates beneath the Great Christmas Ornament Scandal, which was immediately picked up by a host of hyperventilating right-wing Internet sites and blogs and then dutifully flogged into total incoherence by fair-and-balanced Fox News.

Warhol began the series in 1972 in the wake of an epochal visit to Beijing by conservative hero Richard M. Nixon. (The Watergate burglary was four months off.) President Nixon had squeaked into office on the electoral success of the Southern Strategy -- Republican efforts to use race as a wedge issue to appeal to white Southern voters. Finding a Nixon-era Mao in a White House now occupied by our first African American president seems to have shoved some folks over the edge.

Who is the intrepid reporter responsible for the GCOS pseudo-scoop? The post is signed by "Capitol Confidential," a tabloid moniker Warhol himself would have adored. Capitol Confidential is identified as "anonymous sources in the halls of power at the federal, state, and local levels. Big Government double-checks their stories and provides them the cloak they need to reveal the truth."

No, that's not a parody. That's investigative reporting in the age of Drudge. Next thing you know Capitol Confidential will breathlessly uncover the exclusive! shocking! truth! that the Obamas' Christmas tree is also decorated with acorns.

Happy holidays.

-- Christopher Knight

Photos: Andy Warhol, "Mao," 1973; Credit: Ken Hively/Los Angeles Times; Richard Nixon meets Mao Zedong, 1972. Credit: Associated Press

Related:

Glenn Beck's art criticism explained

Glenn Beck's 9/12 logo based on Communist and socialist designs

More art fabrications from the right wing

Comments

[Chad S]

Anyone else find it funny that Andrew Breitbart feels the need to debate his reporting in the comments of an LA Times blog criticizing his narrative..I mean story? We get it: you want to use even the slightest shred of a story to criticize the White House in a self-justifying loop pushing a narrative that the media is in the tank for your political opponents and making you some oppressed minority that really speaks for the views of America(nevermind the cognitive dissonance of this, it requires the presumption that Americans' views on issues are effected by a bias in the media and the top rated media outlets clearly have a clear conservative bias), but shouldn't you wait for a story that actually has something to criticize the White House over so you don't look desperate? Because this ornament "exclusive" makes you look desperate for web hits and you're about 4 "exclusives" like this before you start to look like some Matt Drudge tribute band. I would bet if it came out that the White House blocked the Mao ornament you would be whining about how the White House censored ornaments.

Its nimrods like you who are destroying the conservative movement by making it based on false grievances of liberal oppression and without even a hint of substance or intellectual debate.

[Pete]

God bless Andrew Breitbart. I can't claim to understand the labyrinthine nature of the liberal mind's logic, but I do greatly enjoy how much he upsets them. What does Mao have to do with Christmas? How are the two even remotely related? They aren't of course, it's merely more of the "out with the old, in with our wild, fun, irreverent, freewheeling Progressive ways!" It's childish, and intentionally insulting to anyone who regards traditions as important. Lefties - we get it, you hate America and any American who disagrees with you. Do you have to keep beating us over the head with it?

Dear LA Times - please continue your slow tortured death.

[Randall Carter]

This article is pathetic. The point of bringing these communist mementos (similar to the acorn cookies at White House) is not to gin up outrage. It is simply to catalog instance after instance of examples where Obama or Obama staff clearly show tendencies to support radical causes: Maoism, socialism, black liberation, gay sex education in explicit terms, etc.

A clear pattern has emerged. Are you just blind or too ideologically sympathetic to notice?

[Jeff Wilson]

Acorns?!?! What's next? Tinsel?!!?!

[Jerry]

The problem with conservatives is they're afraid of EVERYTHING so whatever they see makes them wet their pants. America needs to get rid of these sissies.

[RJB]

No wonder your state is about to go bankrupt and your newspaper out of business. your infatuation with leftists and dictators is incompatible with what used to be the greatest nation on earth.

p.s.- commies arent cool.

[Jorge Castro]

Good one Chris!

[G. Gladden]

Magitte once painted a picture of a brown pipe with a simple caption underneath:
"Ceci n'est pas une pipe" The point was that it was not the real thing, but just a picture. Well, the fact that it was Andy Warhol's "Mao" is of no consequence except to liberals. Really, the point is that any depiction of Mao would have been tolerated by the Obama whitehouse, and the left wing media.

[Verballistic]

Thanks for coming Andrew B...I didnt know you posted here until now, so hopefully that will continue. They can spin it as "Warhol's Mao" but Mao Zedong by any other name is just as much of a hero to Obama and all his lefty buds, no matter WHO paints him.

The mask has been slowly pulled back and Obama's approval ratings are circling the drain after only 11 MONTHS in office...2010 could see lots of changes in the Congressional arena and the outright political arrogance of BHO and his crew will more than likely make him a one-term president!!

[brandon]

Andrew is a joke. Anyone who takes his ramblings seriously is also a joke. I would love to take Andrew down to the Nixon library where to this very day there is a statue of Mao standing inside.

Such a commie lover, that Nixon!

[Sam]

Hey Pete,

You don't symbolize America, not in the least, so don't confuse me hating you as me hating America.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

[Homersimpson10]

So the "Savior" likes Mao. And we should be shocked because...? Socialists like each other.. especially the ones in power.

[Park K]

With all the obvious socialistic ideas and decisions made by this administration, we do not need to use a Christmas decoration to convince thinking, sober Americans that we are headed down the road that Mao praised. Hope we wake up in time ????????

[G. Gladden]

I have been to the Nixon library. The statue of Mao is one of several statues of world leaders of history that occupy the room of the display. No question that China and Mao hold a special spot in the Nixon presidency. I think, however, a display of that sort in a historical collection at a museum is quite a bit different than hanging a picture of Mao on the whitehouse Christmas tree.
As far as I can tell from reading this article and the posts, other pictures of former world leaders were not selected to grace the whitehouse on this festive occasion.

[tao9]

"Warhol's parody transformed the leader of the world's most populous nation into a vapid superstar..."

What a fabulously vapid subject Obama would make for Andy! I miss the old Fraud Princess, not much of a master but he knew innocuous when he saw it.

[AtheistConservative]

Relax. It's not Hitler. It's Warhol's Hitler. That makes it okay.

And I love how the 'right wing' uncovering the stories you sycophants won't cover is 'ginning up outrage'. Because it's not important that ACORN is a corrupt organization defended by the President himself. Not important if a 9/11 'truther' gets a job in the government. Not important to know what's in that disaster of a 'health care bill', just pass it! If the Democrats want it, it must be good!

The reason I find you left-wingers so hilarious is you're so smug. For eight years all you had to do to seem intelligent was parrot what you read on your left-wing news sites. Now your guys are in power, and you are so dumb and blind that you don't care how they screw things up. I mean, it's not on HuffPo, so it can't be wrong. It's those crazy right-wingers ginning up outrage!

[Owen]

So that's it? that is your defense of this?
I've been to museums that have pictures and paintings of nude people, close ups of cocks, balls, and vaginas. Since those are in art galleries, they are now okay to put on the White House Christmas tree?
Sweet, next year I'm submitting an ornament.

[Melanerpes Cao]

The Mao ornament is a teenage prank. Bad judgment. No class. Beneath what once was the dignity of the Presidency. It's just that simple, and just that sad.

The adults all seem to be dying off. I feel like I'm in the middle of Lord of the Flies.

[dave]

Funny, it's liberals who are the super sensitive do gooders afraid of offending anybody. Boring white rich liberals so afraid of their own racism and lack of diversity are always the ones who find hidden "racist" meanings in everything. Always projecting their own racism on to others. I find it funny that these boring white people have the nerve to mock a site that asks if it's appropriate to have Mao hanging on a Christmas tree in the WH. These white liberals find offense in everything, feigning outrage every chance they can. It's what whiny liberals do.

[drdvd13]

If it's a replication of a piece of art that is generally recognized as a piece of art, I don't see the big deal. Any statements regarding the motive for this ornament is based on opinion.

To all of you who are saying "the libs/rights are taking over" look at what's going on. It's about 50/50 on most issues so get over yourselves, stop playing the victim and deal with people who have differing opinions. The inflammatory statements made in this article, the article referenced, and most of the responses here drive us towards internal conflict rather than a better future. A house divided against itself cannot stand. Don't sweat the small stuff. Keep it simple stupid.