Jon McNaughton: The Tea Party Painter

With his paintings The Forgotten Man (2010), One Nation Under God (2009), and most recently, Wake Up America! (2011), Jon McNaughton aims to leave little room for interpretation. In their remarkable didacticism—an America on the brink of political and moral disaster—McNaughton’s works serve to call the nation to arms, or at least to the polling booths. The impression is one of thorough legibility, of history as a long list of epigraphs. The artist will have nothing of ambivalence or illegibility. “Everything about [One Nation Under God] is symbolic,” McNaughton frankly explains.

As if dusted off from some Smithsonian storage unit, the crowded regimentation of figures, especially the array of hands and arms, recalls the theatricality of fiberglass scenes in a history museum or commemorative engravings of Congressional celebrities that were popular in the nineteenth century.

However, by fully exploiting Internet technology on his website, these paintings are thoroughly twenty-first century creations. By placing the cursor on each figure, the viewer summons a detailed register of the artist’s comments, identifying the person and explaining why he or she is included. The device confirms my initial sense: these are images you read because they bear meaning, a solemn message that was the principal engine of their creation. Nothing in the images escapes the cursor’s errand.

There are precisely fifty stars in the striped heavens radiating from Jesus’ head in One Nation Under God. And the leaden skies above the White House in The Forgotten Man form “an ominous dark cloud hang[ing] over this country in the form of an uncontrollable Federal Deficit with crushing debt obligations.” In Wake Up America!, a heavy chain snakes through a crowd captivated by President Obama, who delivers a stump speech in falling streams of money. Enslaved to government handouts and excessive spending, the people are depicted as having traded national sovereignty for a new Babylonian captivity.

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Bighoss

Thomas Kinkade has been reincarnated. Instead of cutesy schlock art with cozy cabins, he now creates patently biased propaganda painting, also quite schlocky and incredibly anachronistic.
- Evermyrtle
  
  Thomas Kinkade, in most cases was much the same as the rest of us. He had his good points and he had points that were not so good..But one thing he had that has caused millions to degrade or at least make an attempt to degrade him in their jealousy of him. He was a very talented painter, he painted a very unusual way, his beautiful pictures. In fact He is my very favorite painter.
  
  I understand he was also an alcoholic. How well he handled it, I do not know. I do know he was a Christian, but at the same time he was a sinner just like the rest of us, except he repented. Many of us do not repent and cannot be saved unless we repent. To me it is a shame that the black pot calls the black kettle "black"
  - Bighoss
    
    I am not in any way jealous of the schlock artist, Thomas Kinkade. You need to do more research than you have thus far on the life and behavior of that deplorable human being. Here is a start for you:
    
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9200801/Thomas-Kinkade.html
    
    See also:
    
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/mar/25/arts.artsnews
    
    More yet:
    
    http://articles.latimes.com/2006/mar/05/business/fi-kinkade5
    
    Nasty man!!
    - Washington22
      
      all that you point out still does not deny his beautiful God-given talent and paintings. Look at his work and thank God for his creation.
      - Bighoss
        
        You need to find a local college where you can take a standard course in art appreciation and get your mind right on these things.
      - Evermyrtle
        
        Are you saying what we think is beautiful is wrong and what you think is beautiful is right? First I ever heard of that much audacity in one person.
      - alan g
        
        Bighoss thinks like the Taliban. If he doesn't agree with it, then destroy it.
      - Bighoss
        
        Audacity is not the issue. Bona fide art critics are unanimous in their assessment of Kinkade as a schlock artist. It is only in the imagination of the uneducated and the under-educated that Kinkade qualifies as any kind of great artist. You are free, of course, to find beauty wherever you see it or wherever you think you see it, but what Kinkade produced in his very lucrative career was, and will always be classified as SCHLOCK ART.
        
        Read it and seethe:
        
        http://ourbedofnails.com/2012/04/09/thomas-kincaid-schlock-artist-or-horror-master/
        
        http://susanorlean.com/articles/art_for_everybody.php
        
        http://www.salon.com/2012/04/09/thomas_kinkade_the_george_w_bush_of_art/
    - Evermyrtle
      
      Actually I am not that worried about Kinkade, his time has run out, nothing we can do there, but try to tear him down which means exactly nothing, the cards have already been dwelt. I can do something about myself, I can try to let my every word count for something. There is no reason that I want my words tearing down my fellow man, dead or alive, he does that all by himself.
      
      Most of my posts are not to condemn but to help people see how meaningless tearing people down really is. What good will it do me to in my imagination to put anybody beneathe the mudsills of hell? It will not put him there, I am only responsible for what I do and say and nobody will have to pay or get credit.
      
      I have no desire for any of his records, I am trying to make my own acceptable to GOD.
      - Bighoss
        
        The Kinkade enthusiasts on this forum are trying to grant that schlock artist a status he does not deserve. That misplaced effort is the pure and unfortunate opposite of trying to tear someone down. My assessment of Kinkade is widely held by those who have at least a modicum of understanding about art.
    - Evermyrtle
      
      Actually I am not interested his records, he made all of his own and I will make only mine and I will be responsible for all of things I do whether it be by action, word of mouth or written word. I will have to answer to GOD all by myself. maybe everything I say and do will be kosher with HIM and them maybe not. I will get credit good and bad. Nothing anybody else can say or do will affect my records.
    - alan g
      
      The telegraph, the Guardian and The LA Times. Yeah, they are really reputable. I always go to them for factual and honest reporting. (He says sarcastically).
      - Bighoss
        
        Your sarcasm is typical of the right wingnuts who decry the "mainstream media" and who prefer ultraconservative "information sources" that feed their biases.
      - http://www.answersingenesis.org/ keyboardshark
        
        And your sarcasm, Bighoss, is typical of the left wingnuts who decry the "conservative media" and who prefer ultraliberal "information sources" that feed their biases.
      - UF Gator
        
        Key: littlepony is a monarchist, so I recommend you don't waste your time on him
      - http://www.answersingenesis.org/ keyboardshark
        
        Oh well, didn't take long to write. I just used his own words with the opposite twist to show that he was using the same tactic he was accusing alan g of using.
      - UF Gator
        
        superb : )
      - Bighoss
        
        Yes, superbly shabby and puerile.
      - UF Gator
        
        Explain to American Gram, go ahead bighoss
      - UF Gator
        
        boo hoo little pony
      - Bighoss
        
        You used the standard, unimaginative "so's yer old man" tactic that is the refuge of the polemically incompetent.
      - http://www.answersingenesis.org/ keyboardshark
        
        Wrong, Bighoss, I simply showed that you are hypocritical when you accuse others of using 'biased' news sources. Funny thing about the liberal mainstream media is that they get caught in such obvious bias that even they have to admit it from time to time. Recent case in point:
        
        "There was a rather low-key confession made in the New York Times last week that deserves to be blared throughout this country so that every American understands what they are reading in the establishment’s ultra-controlled, government-managed “press” – and I use that last word loosely indeed.
        
        The admission came in the form of a story by Jeremy Peters on the politics page of the Times July 16. I’ve been waiting for others to point it out, discuss it, debate it, express shock and exasperation over it. But I’ve waited for naught.
        
        What this shocking story reveals is that even I – one of the kingpins of the new media and a refugee from the state-controlled spin machine – underestimated the utter and total corruption of the euphemistically called “mainstream press.”It shows that most – not some – members of the print media establishment with access to the White House submit their copy to government officials for review, “correction” and approval before it reaches the American people!"
        
        http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/proof-establishment-media-controlled/
      - http://www.answersingenesis.org/ keyboardshark
        
        "Here are some key excerpts from the piece, if you think I’m exaggerating:
        “The quotations come back redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything even mildly provocative.”
        “They are sent by e-mail from the Obama headquarters in Chicago to reporters who have interviewed campaign officials under one major condition: the press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name.”
        “Most reporters, desperate to pick the brains of the president’s top strategists, grudgingly agree. After the interviews, they review their notes, check their tape recorders and send in the juiciest sound bites for review. The verdict from the campaign – an operation that prides itself on staying consistently on script – is often no, Barack Obama does not approve this message.”
        “Now, with a millisecond Twitter news cycle and an unforgiving, gaffe-obsessed media culture, politicians and their advisers are routinely demanding that reporters allow them final editing power over any published quotations.”
        “Quote approval is standard practice for the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists and almost all mid-level aides in Chicago and at the White House – almost anyone other than spokesmen who are paid to be quoted. (And sometimes it applies even to them.) It is also commonplace throughout Washington and on the campaign trail.”
        “Many journalists spoke about the editing only if granted anonymity, an irony that did not escape them.”
        “From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department, interviews granted only with quote approval have become the default position. Those officials who dare to speak out of school, but fearful of making the slightest off-message remark, shroud even the most innocuous and anodyne quotations in anonymity by insisting they be referred to as a ‘top Democrat’ or a ‘Republican strategist.’”
        
        http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/proof-establishment-media-controlled/
- http://www.answersingenesis.org/ keyboardshark
  
  @Bighoss
  
  In other words, you do not like an artist who wishes to express patriotic feelings and themes. Especially if those themes do not fit your socialistic, liberal Obama-centered worldview.
Washington22

This man paints THE MOST BEAUTIFUL paintings I've ever seen. I'd love to have one. His work is frequently on Hannity's focus groups backdrop. And what a patriot!
Randy131

The shame of the USA is that it's own people know not it's history, nor the reasoning behind it's formation, but abdicates it's Heritage, the envy of all the people of the world, for lies of safety, security, and promises of rights, not of the Creator, but of evil men, of entitlements that others must pay for, and in accepting these rights of evil men, enslave themselves and denounce their Creator, the GOD of Heaven. If the Founding Fathers had known what the people of today would do, renounce their Heritage of freedoms and rights, won with the lives of those Founding Fathers and the Patriots that followed them, who believed in the Heritage they promised for coming generations, would they have rebelled against King George III and Great Britain, only to see it thrown away by the people of this generation? That's the problem with the ignorance of the American people of today, they don't understand that the inheritance of the Founding Father's Heritage is worth far more than all the entitlements man can think up, and the only rights and freedoms any man has or deserves, is those gifted by the Creator, which the Heritage of the Founding Fathers is the knowledge and ownership of the Creators gifts of rights and freedoms.
BobJohnson321

I think it is the subtlety of these paintings which makes them great.