"For a former president, perhaps every day is like Sunday. Which doesn't quite explain the turn to "Sunday painting" that occurs with some frequency among former leaders of the free world, not to mention their relatives and hangers-on, nor random celebrities galore. What is it about painting that draws the flies? These thoughts surfaced over the past week, as Christie's auctioned off four Jimmy Carter paintings for more than $500,000 collectively-dozens of times their estimated value."
"The subjects of the works range widely ( waterfall, church, still life, Revolutionary War scene), but fundamentally they vary hardly at all. Each is steeped in wholesome Americana, and each is clearly the work of the same sunny hand. The bright colors have no undercurrent. The drawing (pencil lines still visible) is clean and clear-conscienced. In on the painter-president from Plains, Georgia, Amy Carter noted of her father: "In his daily life, he was constantly thinking about really large problems that he wanted to solve . . . None of those things are in his paintings. His paintings seem to be this quiet place of things he loved." Form follows function: The paintings are lovely."
Christie's auctioned four Jimmy Carter paintings for more than $500,000 collectively, dozens of times their estimated value. The works depict varied subjects—waterfall, church, still life, Revolutionary War scene—but share a wholesome Americana sensibility, bright colors, and visible pencil lines. The drawings are clean and conscientious and shy away from political or large-scale themes, focusing instead on quiet subjects loved by the painter. Auction houses and dealers often price celebrity artworks to establish markets and to sell, leveraging fame rather than solely formal artistic evaluation. High-profile political or celebrity artists can raise public scrutiny and ethical questions about the intersection of fame, money, and art.
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