The picture seems just plain weird until one stops to think that the subject of the art and the artist seem to be bowing to the norms of what Islam thinks about representations of humans.
Note that his hand has on its outer side either an extra pinky or a thumb on the wrong side of this hand’s set of fingers. Weird, but that startling hand serves a purpose. It turns image from a real human into something on closer inspection one sees is not human, thereby meeting the Islamic law and preference of not opening opening oneself up to human representation in art.
Obama’s advisors and he himself have surrounded him with a hale of vines and greenery, as is the essence of Islamic art’s taste for the depiction of crawling vines, plants as the main, if not exclusive theme of art.
Obama body, in stark contrast to other presidential portraits, does not stand, just as so so many immigrant Muslims and kneeling football players show their disdain for America by refusing to stand for the flag and the national anthem. Instead he slouches and his legs apart. There are spoofs already out there superimposing a white bathroom commode with flusher for this chair, this because of the every so familiar sitting posture he has struck here.
He could not decline a presidential portrait for the portrait gallery, so he decided to create a scene that mocks the U.S. and the entire non-Islamic world.
The painting by Kehinde Wiley is called Judith and Holofernes, which refers to a story from the apocryphal Book of Judith which inspired a whole bunch of art during the Renaissance and Baroque periods. While the original story did involve a woman whacking off a guys head, Wileys choice to use a black woman holding a dead white woman's severed head is clearly a deliberate one. Wileys become pretty famous for his reimagining of traditional European portraits using black people as stand-ins.
The story revolves around Judith, a daring and beautiful widow, who is upset with her Jewish countrymen for not trusting God to deliver them from their foreign conquerors. She goes with her loyal maid to the camp of the enemy general, Holofernes, with whom she slowly ingratiates herself, promising him information on the Israelites. Gaining his trust, she is allowed access to his tent one night as he lies in a drunken stupor. She decapitates him, then takes his head back to her fearful countrymen. The Assyrians, having lost their leader, disperse, and Israel is saved. Though she is courted by many, Judith remains unmarried for the rest of her life.
1613 - Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Cristafano Allori
In doing so his portrait will stand out throughout history as a joke....like his presidency. Carter who many considered the worst president has a wonderful portrait and will be forgotten in importance eventually. You will never escape Obama standing out....and history will not be kind. I wonder if you can change your official portrait or if it is a done deal. If so, to funny. His portrait and his presidency will live in infamy.