Just as there is the bubble bath, there is now the "Bush bath." I coined the term to indicate, not the luxurious and largely feminine undertones that accompany the bubble bath, but a more matter-of-fact kind of bathing under the shower.
The bather in a "Bush bath" is characterized by a certain kind of "introspective self-absorption."
Where am I deriving such stuff from?
From a recently posted cache of the paintings of George Bush, the 43rd President of the United States.
The "Arts Beats" segment of the NYT brought the fact of Bush's amateur persuasion to my attention. I liked the paintings and so did the critic who reviewed them, enough to discuss the form, content as well as the possible intellectual and painterly tradition to which George Bush the painter might belong (though there is still that wariness that the painter under scrutiny is none other than the boyo Prez, who was considered to have minimal intellect).
The forms, the critic opines,
[Are] handled with care, but awkwardly, which is the source of their appeal. Things are recognizable but just: you can detect posh details like the shower’s chrome hinge and glass door. Everything is honestly accounted for, not sharply realistic, certainly not finicky.
As for the influences working on Bush, the critic speculates that he might be familiar with Jasper Johns' "The Seasons
[Where] each of the four paintings is shadowed by a male, seemingly unclothed silhouette, or Pierre Bonnard’s strangely chaste, luminous paintings of his wife reclining in a bathtub. And one can imagine them being not too out of place in a group show that might include the figurative work of Dana Schutz, Karen Kilimnik, Alice Neel, Christoph Ruckhaberle and Sarah McEneaney.
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