Obama's Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton

Elizabeth Peyton is a contemporary American painter. Her exhibit “Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton” is a collection of portraits, for she has been interested in depicting her friends, her family, herself and several celebrities, such as Kurt Cobain, Matthew Barney, and Marc Jacobs. The painting, Michelle and Sasha Obama Listening to Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention August 2008, hereafter “Michelle and Sasha”, was added to the exhibition shortly after the election of President Obama. While the title gives little or no room for imagination as to what the painting is depicting it is rather surprising to not find Barack Obama illustrated in this image at all.
Michelle Obama is in the audience at her husband’s convention speech
The picture to me is not only a beautiful capture of a real life moment, but rather an evocative and provocative statement for a bright future for all women, especially black. Yet some concerns won’t be answered, one issue is that Peyton is a white woman creating this painting, so I wonder if Michelle Obama is simply another celebrity to her. Revising the above named paintings from the exhibitions, I believe that this painting is more than just a painting of another celebrity. All three paintings, along with other celebrity paintings, are more portraits like and more staged. In “Michelle and Sasha” the composition is more complex, more attention is paid to the background and surrounding, while in the other paintings it seems less attention has been paid to what the background evokes, the situation is clearly not staged. However Peyton sees Michelle Obama as a character, she still can’t be a symbol for all women/black women. She is coming from a very different background and has socially a very different standing than most black women or any woman does. She is married to the President of the United States, which alone gives her powerful position, but also her background and career cannot be compared with many. She grew up on the South Side of Chicago and earned degrees from both Princeton University and Harvard Law School, she also worked in a highly prestigious law firm. That being said raises the question for whom, she can be a role model; how does that affect women that won’t have the chance to take a similar path? In my opinion Michelle Obama is a very kind, caring, and politically active woman who is fighting a battle for others and their chances, but does this painting really reassure and encourage many black women or is it more an