Picasso painting when he was 14.
My theory is that Picasso was a political operative more than an artist. Destroying the beauty of art was one of the communist goals. Picasso's paintings became valuable, not because there was great demand for them, but because rich people paid far more than market value for them.
Looking at Bush's paintings, sorry, but they suck.
Not even sure if he really paints them, cause I don't believe anything the press says, but the brush work is clumsy, facial anatomy is just bad. It's not cubist or impressionist, it's the inability to have the eyes recess properly and follow the curvature of the skull. Color is always iffy on a computer, but the skin tones look horribad.
Back to Picasso as a political agent:
What Picasso was doing in Europe was a precursor to what the Nazis/Marxists in the US did here after WWII. The OSS imported 10,000 Nazis and gaver them new identities. Supposedly, these were scientists for the space program, but shortly afterwards, the OSS changed it's name to the CIA. Harry Truman said to only import people who weren't involved in war crimes, but the OSS ignored him and scrubbed records to get people in. A lot of them probably ended up in the OSS/CIA.
Nelson Rockefeller and the CIA used the Museum of Modern Art to push Abstract Expressionism as the new "American" Art. Their loss leader was Jackson Pollack, an alcoholic from Wyoming, but most of the Abstract Expressionists were Russian Jews.
The public never accepted Abstract Expressionism, but the NY Times pushed it hard, and the Museum of Modern Art paid millions for the paintings, even though they weren't bidding against anyone. Why? A painting may suck, but if someone is paying a million dollars for it, you've gotta look.
Before the CIA/Rockefeller/NYTimes/MOMA push, painters like Edward Hopper were the big names.
I think Hopper is the guy Bush is trying to copy. Notice the broad brush strokes and limited palette. However, Hopper knows what he's doing. The limited palette is used to enhance the mood. Bush doesn't know what he's doing with the palette. Hopper didn't have a lot of detail in his work, but the strokes that are there are correct. The perspective works. The body language tells a story.
This is a rehabilitation attempt for Bush. Like Jimmy Carter and Dan Rather, they're doing everything they can to make them less detestable to the average person.