A golden angel as a statement? Trumps new decorations for the White House

There is only two weeks in between, but the difference is unmistakable: with the dramatic encounter in the Oval Office between US President Trump and the Ukrainian President Zensky at the end of February, the front of the chimney mantle is still relatively scanty. But if Trump has a smiling NATO secretary-General Rutte in mid-March, it suddenly has a large golden curly ornament applied that looks like a shiny trophy between them.

It is every time it is to blink with the eyes when new photos come from the Oval Office. The political power measurements in the foreground get all the attention, but in the background, on the walls, on the mantelpiece and the side tables, a very own spectacle takes place.

In the two months of Trumps second presidency, the interior of the Oval Office has undergone a steady transformation. The precise numbers are not known, but CNN Even with a calculation of ‘three times more paintings on the wall’, and above all: many more new gold statues, golden mirror frames and even golden cherubins (angels), which Trump personally brings to the white house from Mar-A-Lago in Florida-all in an indefinable, historical-looking style. The president even appears to have a plan to have a new ballroom built, inspired by the Spiegelzaal of Versailles.

But: why does Trump actually do that? Or rather: why now? Because certainly, Donald Trump has always liked to be surrounded with gold, but compared to 2016, his mark on the design in the White House is now significantly bright.

Some critics therefore see all his new monarchist ambitions reflected in Trumps Golden Stuff: this is not the style of a president, but of a ‘king’, as CNN quotes an anonymous white house employee. The new gold also likes to be compared to the grandeur who likes to collect Putin and other dictators. Or one believes that a reference to Louis XIV is discovered, the sun king that his guests consciously tried to impress with a blinding golden wealth.

The historic -looking gold is like a trophy of a new guilded age on the mantelpiece

And of course, it is unmistakable that a proven strategy is applied here: with golden showpieces impressed by the guests, and through the cameras the rest of the world. But for inspiration for this, Trump does not have to look at old Europe or the contemporary Russia. His golden message on the mantelpiece fits seamlessly with a crucial period in modern American cultural history: the late 19th century, the Gilded Age, the time of the rich oil and industrial barns and their throw to political power.

The Trumps and Musks of Around 1900 had a lot of money and a lot of power, but they were also eagerly looking for their own style to be able to propagate that power as clearly as possible. America itself did not have it yet, so the new rich on a merchant hunt in Paris, the then center of culture, where a wide range of neohistoric styles in fashion was: neorococo, neo -baroque and other gold -rigid -rigid past suggestions. Many French artists even started producing especially for the American market, and crates full of gilded frills, even shiny and shinier than their European originals, have shipped from Europe to the new mega villas on the American East and West Coast in those years.

And now? In fact, the exalted Gilded-age style should have been forgotten. In the decades after 1920, modernism tried to erase this past with grim zeal, the neo -styles were the highlight of bad taste for the art world for decades. But especially in the US, the style has never been completely gone; Trumps interior in Mar-A-Lago (originally built in 1924-27) is the best known example of it.

Now a new phase seems to have arrived. In his first term, Trump still kept himself somewhat at the traditional thoroughness in the Oval Office, but the increasing zeal with which he now feels his golden things to the White House as a statement: the historical -looking gold as the sign of a new guilded age; As a golden trophy to underline the new political influence of contemporary American mega rich.

And why bad taste? Good taste is just that what he puts on the mantelpiece, Trump seems to think; Not what that annoying culture elite says it should be. No matter how crazy that sounds, he could suddenly get right in – even if it is with a detour. Because if there are enough photos of Trumps golden angels around the world, it will automatically become fashion again.

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