With “A Shining City on the Hilltop,” an exhibition of 35 charming acrylic paintings of life at Southern Methodist University, former President George W. Bush has moved firmly into the post-presidential phase of his painting career. His earlier series of work — portraits of world leaders, military veterans and immigrants — were done after his presidency but explored themes close to the center of American public life, and represented a viewpoint developed over years of experience as a public servant.
By contrast, his most recent works — the flowers, birds and landscapes shown in 2022, and the new studies of campus life — take a perspective far removed from Washington, D.C., and more plainly focused on North Texas. In looking them over, I found them to stimulate pleasant reflections on SMU, Dallas and Bush’s perspective on both.
To begin with, the installation is disarmingly low-key. After passing through the Bush Center’s monumental limestone façade, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects in the stern, no-nonsense, stripped classical style common to public buildings in the FDR era, and through the obligatory metal detector, a viewer finds the paintings (all untitled) hung on clearly temporary, folding and carpeted display stands throughout the lobby and the adjoining side hallway.
The contrast is stark: While the chiseled inscription on the façade, the interior pecan paneling and the soaring ceiling of the Freedom Hall all strive for immortal grandeur, the paintings are presented casually, as if the museum were saying: By the way, here’s something else you might want to see.
This kind of unpretentious relatability was a valuable asset for Bush throughout his political career. In the 2000 presidential campaign, his decided advantage on the question, “Who would you like to have a beer with?” appealed to many voters, most memorably in his first debate with Al Gore, who came across as a condescending know-it-all, immortalized in the famous Saturday Night Live sketch that, I can report, still reliably amuses viewers far too young to remember Bush’s presidency.
When I watched that debate on TV, I’d never been to Texas; only after moving here later did I realize this unassuming affability is a common, admirable trait of North Texans in general, who, regardless of social status, are more likely to invite guests to barbecue or Tex-Mex than to a 10-course tasting menu by a celebrity chef. Throughout his post-presidency, Bush has presented his painting with the same straightforward frankness; never claiming to have a special artistic genius or talent, he’s simply offered his work with goodwill for whoever might appreciate it.
In that spirit, I respect both the subject and approach of the paintings. In particular, I enjoyed Bush’s vibrant use of color to enliven the scenes. Throughout the show, the vivid fields of purple, orange and pink, along with the bright red and blue of the SMU Mustangs, were more evocative of, say, New Mexico than of the mild greens and browns more typical of North Texas landscapes.
The scenes also present the SMU campus, including the Bush Center, as an idyllic and inspiring place, offering members of its community an immensely appealing way of life. Students and visitors stroll across the attractively landscaped grounds, sit and read on benches, walk their dogs in the park, admire sculptures and fountains, watch football games and visit exhibits at the center. Who wouldn’t want to be there?
One can easily see why many parents might be willing to pay $93,000 a year for the chance to have their children study at SMU. Not for nothing is Highland Park known as “the bubble”; in the paintings, the comfortable, highly affluent SMU community seems a world away from the grittier, rougher aspects of the broader metropolis, or of the various challenges that otherwise confront higher education at the moment.
The title of the show, however, invokes not hedonistic leisure but something nobler. The “city upon a hill,” a phrase from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount used throughout American political rhetoric from the Puritans through JFK to Obama to evoke an idealistic national purpose, indicates an orientation toward higher learning and public service. This is most clearly evident in the painting of the center’s 2013 dedication in the presence of Presidents George W. and George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, with American flags flying and a military band playing, but it is also more subtly a part of the depictions of visitors to the Bush Center, showing them studying exhibits on the subjects of freedom, leadership and military service.
From a less-inspiring point of view, the paintings are a dispiriting reminder that we Americans of the 2020s are a highly casual people, not to say schlubby, in our manner of dress and public presentation. Cargo shorts, baggy T-shirts and Teva sandals are the order of the day. Does anyone dress for anything anymore? Not in these pictures. If Americans are to preserve the cause of freedom in our time, it will have to be done while dressed for doing yard work.
Also on the critical side, I rated Bush’s drawing less highly than his color. The walking and standing people seemed a bit stiff and jerky, as though the painter were more interested in landscape and color than in the nuances of the human body. While his earlier portraits showed a good deal of nuance and sensitivity toward the faces of their subjects, the full bodies here seem not to hold his attention quite as much (perhaps just as well, considering the low level of their fashion choices).
Taking a final tour of the show, it occurred to me that the diary might be the best analogy for Bush’s paintings. In the world of books, diarists from Samuel Pepys to Anne Frank have been read, not primarily for their literary talents (though they have them) but for their unique points of view on their life and times.
In the visual arts, the notebooks and letters of painters like Delacroix and Van Gogh are of interest, despite the sketchy and unfinished pictures in them, because they show how and what the artists noticed and observed. Similarly, viewers will see Bush’s paintings not primarily with an eye to his talent (though it’s there) but for the chance to see through the eyes of someone who did a great deal to shape our era.
This will become all the more so as the years of Bush’s presidency recede into the past. The youngest voters in the next presidential election will have been born during the first term of President Obama. In their minds, the Iraq War and the 2008 financial crisis, which were so significant during Bush’s presidency, will be as remote as the Vietnam War was for Gen Xers such as myself: something that mattered tremendously at the time, but is now known only through history books and recollections of elders.
For them, these paintings might excite some curiosity about a figure of recent history. For older folks, this “painter’s diary” is a chance to see through the eyes of a leader who, from the pinnacle of power, retired like Cincinnatus and Washington to a quiet private life, pleased to share his observations in the winningly unostentatious local fashion.
Details
“A Shining City on the Hilltop” is on view through Oct. 19 at the George W. Bush Presidential Center, 2943 SMU Blvd., Dallas. Open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. Adults $26, youth $24, seniors and college students $23, children $20, veterans $10, members, SMU students/faculty/staff, K-12 teachers, and infants free. 214-200-4300. bushcenter.org.
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