McNaughton’s latest, “The Masterpiece,” seats Trump in the artist’s place, as the president raises the curtain on a painting of his own. But the new work’s enigmatic message—it’s unclear what exactly Trump has painted—has lead to a flood of memes mocking McNaughton’s latest portrait.
A new McNaughton painting is often a cause for celebration on social media. Commonly depicting Trump with a beatific smile, engaged in prayer, or sometimes as a great athlete, McNaughton’s paintings can look like missives from an alternate dimension to people familiar with the president’s swaggering stump speech fabrications and love of fast food and gossip. Typically promoted more by critics than fans, McNaughton’s portraits dramatize the glaring contradiction between Trump’s behavior and how he’s perceived by his biggest supporters.
“The Masterpiece” is especially well-suited for meme modification, because the subject of the painting—itself a painting—can be easily changed to something other than the vague medley of blues and greens McNaughton provided.
It could, for example, be replaced by fan art depicting a bizarre tryst between Garfield and Jon Arbuckle. Or perhaps it’s Trump’s unreleased tax returns hiding under the red velvet drop cloth:
Nazi imagery was particularly common, as were modified versions portraying Trump’s connections with deceased alleged child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, including references to Epstein’s bizarre portrait of former president Bill Clinton wearing Monica Lewinsky’sstained blue dress:
McNaughton provided his own interpretation of the painting in a YouTube video. “What does the future hold for America?” McNaughton asks in the video, before describing how Democrats, Republicans, the media and an alleged Deep State have worked to undermine Trump. “But the painting is not finished. I believe that Trump will yet reveal in the future a greater degree of prosperity, justice and American influence than has ever been seen before. His greatest achievements are yet to be revealed. How will history remember the presidency of Donald Trump? I believe it will be considered his masterpiece.”
