The Artist Painting Trump's Most Incendiary Words

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“I’m not a political person, especially,” says San Francisco-based artist Ward Schumaker. But, like for many people, the start of the Trump administration pushed him to confront some hard truths. A painter and maker of unique art books, Schumaker has long used words in his work; Trump’s own statements, however inflammatory or incendiary, suddenly seemed like the foundation of an uncomfortable new project.

The result is Hate Is What We Need, a book of text-based paintings made during the summer of 2017 that incorporate the President’s own controversial comments. (A trade version is published by Chronicle Books; the original, one-of-a-kind book is on offer from Jack Fischer Gallery, with the aim of placing it with an institution)....

The Trumpian quotes that Schumaker painted range from the snide and sexual (the Access Hollywood “grab them by the pussy” moment) to the bizarrely honest (“I love the poorly educated,” 2016). They capture the President pontificating about the border wall, boasting of his love for Hispanics, exhorting those at his rallies toward violence, denying the validity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate, extolling his own handsomeness, and celebrating Frederick Douglass as if he were still alive. Occasionally, Schumaker samples in voices adjacent to Trump, like senior advisor Stephen Miller (“...the powers of the President will not be questioned”) or the swift-tenured Press Secretary Anthony Scaramucci (whose anatomical quote about Steve Bannon is not fit to reprint here). The book’s title comes from a 1989 interview in which Trump railed against five teenagers falsely accused of a gang rape in Central Park....

Schumaker finished his work on Hate Is What We Need in August just before the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that ended with an apparent vehicular homicide. The artist, at the last minute, tucked “On Many Sides” into the final page of the book—a remnant of Trump’s infamous response to the events, including stating that there was “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” (Meanwhile, Trump certainly hasn’t stopped talking, and Schumaker is in the midst of a follow-up to Hate Is What We Need.)....

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-artist-painting-trumps-incendiary

http://wardschumaker.blogspot.com/2018/03/hate-is-what-we-need-chronicle-books.html

https://www.amazon.com/Hate-What-Need-Ward-Schumaker/dp/1452173028

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1. These are such impressive works.