Trump has realised he can't control how people see him

You can’t control how someone else sees you however much Donald Trump may wish it.

- LIZZIE CANE

Art is necessarily subjective, which is perhaps how a portrait of the president by the British-born artist Sarah Boardman, intended to sit as a neutral addition to a presidential portfolio, is seen by its subject as “the worst” and “purposefully distorted”.

The portrait has quietly hung in the Colorado State Capitol building since 2019 alongside those of other past presidents. It is unclear what led Trump to notice it now, but he compared it unfavourably – and loudly – to Boardman’s previous portrait of Barack Obama and suggested that she was deteriorating as an artist (although at 63, she is 15 years younger than Trump). He has blamed Boardman and Democratic governor Jared Polis – the painting was, in fact, commissioned by a group of Republicans through a GoFundMe – and successfully demanded that the painting be removed.

When I created my sculpture of the president, also in 2019 (The Greatest Sculpture in the History of Sculptures), it wasn’t intended as a political piece either. That might sound odd given his office, but my aim was rather to explore the human condition through the image of one of the world’s most famous people. Trump is a fascinating figure in that no matter what he or his administration does, he shirks responsibility. There’s no humility, never any sign of remorse – much less an apology – so I imagined that if we were to actually witness him exhibiting vulnerability, it would be behind closed doors, slumped over like a petulant child.