Kind of surprised there's no thread on this yet. I put it in social issues & current events because I hope we can confine the discussion to the portraits themselves.
You can get a decent look at
both pictures here.
As portraits go, these are certainly non-traditional. Barack is sitting in a chair, which is apparently in the middle of a hedge, because he is surrounded by green leaves. A few of the leaves are colored differently; these refer to Kenya (his father's birthplace), Hawaii (where he largely grew up) and Chicago (where he lived as an adult before becoming president).
But the one that is attracting the most attention is Michelle's portrait. She's seated as well, in a "Thinker" pose. She's wearing an enormous dress. But the oddest thing about the portrait to my eye is how washed out all the colors look; it's almost all pastel shades, except for some bright red stripes at the bottom of the dress. Which to my eye makes it look like an advertisement for the dress.
A bunch of people have commented that it doesn't look much like Michelle, and taken quite a bit of grief for it. Chris Cillizza, a liberal reporter for the Washington Post was
called a racist (some NSFW tweets on that post) for making that (pretty obvious) point:
Now in fairness, a lot of crazy racist knuckle-draggers argued that Michelle didn't look mannish enough (refers to a bizarre conspiracy theory that Barack is secretly gay and Michelle is secretly a man).
Sean Hannity, however has
pinned the crazy meter with his take on Barack's portrait. There are no words:
The "secret sperm" of course is that little vein that runs by Barack's left temple and up to his hairline; if you look for pictures of him online you will often see it, particularly when he is presenting a left profile.
My take? You know how it is; if the Obamas are happy then I don't really care much. Neither of the portraits really appeals to me, but I can kind of see where they're going with it.
