White House Letter: For Obamas, a More Abstract Choice of Art

“Cobb’s Barns, South Truro,” top, and “Burly Cobb’s House, South Truro,” in the Oval Office. The works are by Edward Hopper.

Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times 

WASHINGTON — In a visit with his daughters this past summer, President Obama spent nearly an hour at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the nation’s largest repository of paintings and sketches by Edward Hopper.

He also could have seen a few Hoppers at home.

Two of Hopper’s classic depictions of the American landscape — “Cobb’s Barns, South Truro” and “Burly Cobb’s House, South Truro” — now hang on the southeast side of the Oval Office, to the right of the French doors that lead to the Rose Garden.

The two paintings of a Cape Cod farm, on loan from the Whitney since last year, are the most recent artistic additions to the Oval Office. They are part of a yearslong shift by Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, who have put their more modern aesthetic imprint on the White House.

The result is a style that is still classically American but now includes works by Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg and others, among the 19th-century landscapes and portraits of past presidents.

“There was discussion about the president and first lady liking more abstract art,” said William Allman, the longtime curator of the White House art collection, who has arranged loans of the more modern paintings from museums. “Our collection doesn’t really have any of that.”

Photo

“Early Bloomer [Anagram (A Pun)],” a work by Robert Rauschenberg that hangs in the Obama family dining room.

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Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times 

In February, Mrs. Obama unveiled a revamped design for the Old Family Dining Room, a public space that since 1961 has been largely reserved for smaller official dinners and working meals with foreign leaders.

Down came the 1902 portrait by Theobald Chartran of Edith Carow Roosevelt, wife of the 26th president, with white gloves in her hand. In its place: the 1998 “Early Bloomer [Anagram (A Pun)],” a work by Rauschenberg that features swaths of red, white, blue, yellow and brown, with hints of an American flag.

A large mirror now hangs over the fireplace where a portrait of Frances Folsom Cleveland, the wife of President Grover Cleveland, used to be. On other walls in the room are largely abstract paintings by Alma Thomas, an African-American expressionist painter from Washington, and two by Josef Albers: “Homage to the Square” and “Study for Homage to the Square.”

Bill Kloss, an art historian and a former member of the Committee for the Preservation of the White House, said that despite the Obamas’ taste in modern and contemporary art, they “still are trying to keep a sense of formality” in a residence first occupied by President John Adams in 1800.

Art does change slowly in the White House. Most of the sculptures and historical objects on display are part of the White House’s permanent art collection, which also includes about 500 paintings.

When a new first family arrives, the curator’s office selects the pieces to display in the building’s public and private spaces.

But presidents and their families have full veto authority, and most have exercised it. President George W. Bush displayed in the Oval Office a painting by W. H. D. Koerner, “A Charge to Keep,” which showed a rugged cowboy racing a horse up a wooded mountain trail, followed by roughriders. Mr. Bush liked the painting and title so much that he named his campaign memoir after it. (Later research revealed that the painting originally accompanied a Saturday Evening Post story about a horse thief escaping a lynch mob.)

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President Ronald Reagan insisted that a portrait of Calvin Coolidge hang in the cabinet room, a tribute to the fiscal discipline of the 30th president. George W. Bush replaced the Coolidge portrait with one of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, which hung for eight years, until Mr. Obama replaced Eisenhower with one of his favorites: President Harry S. Truman, on loan from the Truman Library in Independence, Mo.

As first lady in the early 1990s, Hillary Rodham Clinton got a Georgia O’Keefe painting, “Bear Lake, New Mexico,” for the Green Room. Her successor, Laura Bush, urged the acquisition of the 1947 painting called “The Builders,” by Jacob Lawrence. It hung in the Green Room as well, its bold colors and blocky shapes of construction workers a stark contrast in the formal setting, with its green silk-covered walls and early 19th-century American furniture. The Lawrence still hangs in the Green Room. The O’Keefe is now in the White House library.

The Obamas have left some of the traditions in place. In the Oval Office, an 1823 portrait by Rembrandt Peale of George Washington still hangs over the fireplace. George Henry Story’s Abraham Lincoln from 1915 is near the entrance of the Oval Office in the West Wing hallway.

Mr. Obama has added traditional art to the Oval Office as well. A 1946 Norman Rockwell painting of the Statue of Liberty is to the left of the fireplace and a 1917 Childe Hassam painting, “The Avenue in the Rain,” is between the windows and a bookcase.

When the Hoppers were installed last year, a White House photographer snapped a picture of Mr. Obama from behind, looking intently at the two paintings on the wall. “It was something he had expressed an interest in — Hopper as an artist,” Mr. Allman said.

Out of view to tourists, the first family has installed more than a dozen pieces of contemporary and modern art throughout the upstairs living quarters of the White House residence, where the family spends most of their private time.

There are “Sky Light” and “Watusi (Hard Edge),” two abstract paintings by Ms. Thomas, and “White Line,” a 1960 bright multitude of colors by Sam Francis. Rothko’s 1955 “Red Ban,” a big splash of yellow and red, is also upstairs in the residence.

In the White House Treaty Room, on the second floor of the residence, is the 1976 “Butterfly” by Susan Rothenberg, a six-foot-by seven-foot canvas of burnt sienna and black slashes that evokes a galloping horse. The painting is on loan from the National Gallery of Art.

Melissa Chiu, the director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, which has lent the Obamas several paintings, said the choice of art by the family reflected the increasing diversity of American art.

“The recognition of African-American artists is a big piece of that,” she said. “At many levels, you are seeing a diversification of the selection of artwork and artists that reveals the story of the United States.”