Editing for Partisanship

Citizen-Made Art and Populist Aesthetics

Abstract

Donald Trump’s presidency deserves to be remembered for its art, but not the art patronized by the first couple or White House cultural events celebrated American expressive traditions and innovations. Trump’s populist moment, from the 2016 campaign through his tumultuous exit and return to the presidency, should be remembered, among other things, for the varied and unconventional citizen-made art that it inspired. His presidencies emboldened citizens of different political persuasions to participate in, display, exchange and sell their idiosyncratic artworks. The art that best exemplifies the Trump era’s populist politics is not fine art, but rather art by, of and for the people, crafted with common tools and made to speak to the specifics of the moment in its visual and aural vernacular rather than transcend it. For populist movements in the US, from the frontier to the present, popular culture has been the mode and medium of exchange that has performed the vital task of creating political (and oppositional) community and shared, but not monolithic, identity as “the people.” In this moment, the aesthetics of “the people” is not found in formal traits that are shared among works, but in a relational aesthetic – one of domination. Through analysis of two small, digital works, this essay examines two aspects of this: the aestheticization of domination, through violence and ridicule; and the power to re-signify objects to ventriloquize them as partisan, erasing previous meanings and histories.