Stuart Noble

The Audacity of Taupe

Credit: Bob Schutz/Associated Press

Apart from the silly play on one of Obama’s book titles, there’s some interesting rhetoric to be read from this slide NYT Slide Show: The Oval Office Through the Decades

Jib Jab Obama

PoMoBama

Thanks to BNN and the great community of commenters there, I was led to this set of images from the Obama family’s visit to the Pompidou Museum in Paris. Shaw’s playful post title, The Artful President, certainly leaves plenty of room for interpretation. I’ve filed these images to come back to later when I explore the Obama candidacy’s engagement with the art world. The culture signals emanating from the Obama White House are undeniably postmodern, cosmopolitan and even transnational. I had originally assumed that the intense advocacy of his candidacy from the art world developed as an independent phenomenon. But perhaps Team Obama was actively cultivating that energy earlier than what I had figured?

Related, and equally interesting to my research was this piece byAmy Chozick and Kelly Crow for the WSJ, “Changing the Art on the White House Walls.”

Here, the diverse representation by African-American, Asian, Hispanic and female artists during the campaign is being brought into the White House.

(image: Pete Souza/White House. Paris. June 6, 2006. WH Flickr stream)

hope(less)

A fitting metaphor for the short-lived progressive movement. via

YouTube Presidency

The Times reports on the conversion of Obama’s online campaign infrastructure. It will be fascinating to follow how Team Obama adapts its media strategy as the entire media ecology is in flux. But the Times could not have been serious with:

Like George W. Bush before him, Mr. Obama is trying to bypass the mainstream news media and take messages straight to the public.

Kidding right? I guess it depends on which public.

“one month off” by Bloc Party

This is a brilliant new video from their album Intimacy.