I can recognise and love every one of William Hogarth's (1697-1764) works of art. What I did NOT realise that one of his dogs, Trump (c1730–1745), appeared in a number of his engavings and paintings. Apart from looking ugly, it has been suggested by Hogarth's biographer Ronald Paulson that this dog appeared as an emblem of the artist's own pug-nacious and dog-matic character.
Hogarth was clever and famous for blasting whatever he considered to be politically corrupt, vulgar, criminal, charitable and patriotic . The artist was disparagingly nicknamed the Painter Pugg, but Hogarth continued to use the dog as his trademark in a satirical 1763 engraving The Bruiser, based on his 1745 self-portrait with Trump. The Bruiser replaced Hogarth's portrait with the satirist Charles Churchill, lampooned as a drunken bear, while the dog urinated on a copy of the Epistle published by Churchill in support of John Wilkes, which criticised Hogarth.
How prescient William Hogarth was!!
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William Hogarth and Trump, 1745
Hogarth was clever and famous for blasting whatever he considered to be politically corrupt, vulgar, criminal, charitable and patriotic . The artist was disparagingly nicknamed the Painter Pugg, but Hogarth continued to use the dog as his trademark in a satirical 1763 engraving The Bruiser, based on his 1745 self-portrait with Trump. The Bruiser replaced Hogarth's portrait with the satirist Charles Churchill, lampooned as a drunken bear, while the dog urinated on a copy of the Epistle published by Churchill in support of John Wilkes, which criticised Hogarth.
How prescient William Hogarth was!!
Tate Museum, London
Since the beginning of his career, Donald Trump has been, at best, apathetic to the arts in New York and elsewhere. His first media spectacle, in 1980, focused on the then-33-year-old developer destroying a pair of Art Deco reliefs that were part of the facade of the Bonwit Teller Building in midtown Manhattan, which Trump tore down to build his Trump Tower. The Metropolitan Museum of Art wanted the reliefs for its collection and Trump agreed to donate them, if the cost of their removal wasn’t prohibitive. It wasn’t, but Donald Trump’s construction crew destroyed the works anyway. He later told the New York Times that he was concerned for “the safety of people on the street below”.
Later Donald Trump fashioned himself as a philistine par excellence. In 1999 Trump made a public call for censorship and claimed that his hypothetical presidency would cut federal funding for the arts. That was the year that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani embarked on a crusade against the Brooklyn Museum for its exhibition of Chris Ofili’s The Holy Mary Virgin (1996), which depicted the Madonna in ugly materials. Giuliani went so far as to try to cancel the institution’s lease with the city, evicting it from its home of more than 100 years. Only Trump supported the mayor's criticism, releasing a statement to the Daily News that said “As president, I would ensure that the National Endowment of the Arts stops funding of this sort. It’s not art. It’s absolutely gross, degenerate stuff.” Note the word degenerate.
But as a citizen, Donald Trump has had a more tangible effect on the NEA beyond his mere endorsement of slashing government funding for the arts. In 2013, Trump took over the lease of the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Ave in Washington DC, in order to build a private 270-room hotel. Among the occupants that were forced to vacate were the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Since the beginning of his career, Donald Trump has been, at best, apathetic to the arts in New York and elsewhere. His first media spectacle, in 1980, focused on the then-33-year-old developer destroying a pair of Art Deco reliefs that were part of the facade of the Bonwit Teller Building in midtown Manhattan, which Trump tore down to build his Trump Tower. The Metropolitan Museum of Art wanted the reliefs for its collection and Trump agreed to donate them, if the cost of their removal wasn’t prohibitive. It wasn’t, but Donald Trump’s construction crew destroyed the works anyway. He later told the New York Times that he was concerned for “the safety of people on the street below”.
Later Donald Trump fashioned himself as a philistine par excellence. In 1999 Trump made a public call for censorship and claimed that his hypothetical presidency would cut federal funding for the arts. That was the year that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani embarked on a crusade against the Brooklyn Museum for its exhibition of Chris Ofili’s The Holy Mary Virgin (1996), which depicted the Madonna in ugly materials. Giuliani went so far as to try to cancel the institution’s lease with the city, evicting it from its home of more than 100 years. Only Trump supported the mayor's criticism, releasing a statement to the Daily News that said “As president, I would ensure that the National Endowment of the Arts stops funding of this sort. It’s not art. It’s absolutely gross, degenerate stuff.” Note the word degenerate.
But as a citizen, Donald Trump has had a more tangible effect on the NEA beyond his mere endorsement of slashing government funding for the arts. In 2013, Trump took over the lease of the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Ave in Washington DC, in order to build a private 270-room hotel. Among the occupants that were forced to vacate were the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.