imaginary presidential art

It may be an idle thought of no interest to anyone but me, but I sometimes try to imagine what Jean-Michel Basquiat would have made of Barack Obama. Being a great admirer of both, I naturally imagine that Basquiat would have been inspired to add Obama to his pantheon of crowned heads, which included Joe Louis, Cassius Clay, and Charlie Parker. (Yes, that's an actual Basquiat crown that I added to Obama's image at the left.)

Although the similarities may be broad, the more I think about it, the more the two seem to have in common. Basquiat was born on December 22, 1960, just 225 days before Obama on August 4, 1961. Both rose like rocketships to dominate their fields, painting and politics, with a youthful vigor more desperately needed than we had thitherto realized. And both confounded the usual American racial categories by having black parents from outside the U.S. (in Basquiat's case, from Haiti and Puerto Rico), which may have something to do with a worldliness of vision uncommon to Americans of any color.

For what it's worth, I don't think for a second that Basquiat would have produced campaign-suitable propaganda, like Shepard Fairey's Obama posters, but I'm sure he would have painted something striking. That's the problem, among others, with people who die young: they stop making new work.

In lieu of producing anymore fake Basquiats for the campaign, I have a question for my readers: what artists do you imagine depicting the 2008 presidential candidates? Here are mine.

Barack Obama: Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Hillary Clinton: Lucian Freud.
John McCain: Goya.

Post your presidential artists in the comments.