David and Art - Ike and the Arts

March 14th, 1958 was a Friday, and the president of the United States had almost an hour all to himself before the cabinet meeting that morning. What was even more unusual was that there was not a single interruption for 45 minutes.

His personal secretary Ann Whitman said it was simply unheard of. Ike was relaxed and lighthearted as he chatted with Whitman about one of his favorite forms of relaxation, painting. As he gazed out the window of the Oval Office onto the South Lawn, he pointed out the astounding range of colors, especially the greens that were beginning to brighten the spring morning.

The large magnolia tree and the shadows underneath it, the shrubs, the grass on the rolling lawn all were green, yet all were different. He complained that in his painting, all of his greens tended to be too, green as he contemplated his choice of colors he pondered for a moment about going back to working with just 6 or 7 basic colors and blending other shades from those.

He also admitted that he was insecure about his sense of artistic arrangement within his paintings, whether a road turned to the right or left, for instance, but his problems with the color green concerned him the most. For a few moments, the president of the United States sounded just like any other amateur painter. Like hundreds of thousands of Americans in the 1950s, President Dwight D Eisenhower was an avid amateur painter.

Unlike most other amateurs, though, his hobby received the whole country's attention and certainly inspired thousands who might not have otherwise attempted to do so, to pick up a brush and follow the general to the canvas. The only other amateur who could even approach Ike's fame as a weekend painter was his good friend Winston Churchill. As an example of the avid amateur, Eisenhower's influence was significant, but he and his administration influenced art in the United States in far more lasting ways through official policies and legislation.

During his time in office, Eisenhower supported programs to send American artists abroad, and he endorsed a drive to build a national cultural and performing arts center in Washington, D.C.. He also pressed for the creation of a new commission that would use the national government to improve the status and condition of arts in the United States. He liked to think of himself as a friend of the arts, and he was consistently worried that his fellow Americans were too willing to put material abundance above art and culture as a benchmark of the country's success and prosperity.

Without a vibrant and dynamic high culture, Ike feared the United States would have a hollow soul. He thought that appreciation and exposure to the arts could offset this materialism.

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