Jon McNaughton's "The Masterpiece" Painting

Submission 14,509

Part of a series on Donald Trump. [View Related Entries]

About

"The Masterpiece is a painting by American artist Jon McNaughton. The work depicts United States President Donald Trump as a painter at his easel unveiling a new artwork. Online, many mocked the painting, which inspired a series of image edits that altered the painting within the painting.

Origin

On August 20th, 2019, Jon McNaughton tweeted ^[1] "The Masterpiece." He added the caption, "My new painting – 'The Masterpiece' How will history remember this presidency? I believe it will be considered a 'Masterpiece.'" Within 24 hours, the tweet received more than 20,000 likes and 7,000 retweets (shown below).

Spread

Following the post, people replied to McNaughton's tweet with edited variations of the painting. For example, Twitter^[2] user @skolanach replaced the portrait of former President Barack Obama. The tweet received more than 15,000 likes and 2,300 retweets in 24 hours (shown below, left).

Twitter^[3] user @kevinwmoore tweeted a variation, which featured an image of migrants in cages, criticizing the president's immigration policy of housing detained migrants in overcrowded cages.

Twitter^[4] user @HelenKennedy replaced the image with the Edvard Munch painting "The Scream". The tweet received more than 9,000 likes and 1,000 retweets in 24 hours (shown below, right).

Several media outlets covered the painting, including Newsweek,^[5] HuffPost,^[6] Jezebel,^[7] Raw Story,^[8] Mashable ^[9] and more. That day, Twitter^[10] published a Moments page on the painting.