Freedom in Portrait — and the Weight of History

DOKUNST

The Call of Freedom: Portraits of Political Prisoners and Dissidents brings together 44 full-colour oil portraits of individuals persecuted because of their ethnicity, gender, political convictions or religious beliefs. Among the subjects announced so far are Jina Mahsa Amini, whose death in the custody of Iran’s morality police ignited the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest movement; Nicaraguan bishop Rolando José Álvarez Lagos; and Gulshan Abbas, a Uyghur doctor detained in China. The paintings are accompanied by biographical texts and a foreword by former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky. Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group within Penguin Random House, will release both a standard hardcover and a signed deluxe edition. An exhibition of the portraits will open simultaneously at the George W. Bush Presidential Museum in Dallas. A portion of the author’s proceeds will benefit organisations supporting political dissidents around the world, as well as the Bush Institute’s work in this field.

Bush began painting after leaving the presidency in 2009, inspired by Winston Churchill’s essay Painting as a Pastime. What initially appeared to be a private pursuit—and an almost curious epilogue to a political life—gradually developed into a distinct form of post-presidential engagement. In Portraits of Courage, he depicted veterans of the wars conducted during his administration; Out of Many, One was devoted to immigrants in the United States. He now turns his attention to political prisoners and dissidents, many of whom he encountered either during his presidency or later through the work of his institute. Judging from the images released so far, his painting aspires less to formal innovation than to immediate recognition. The luminous colours, frontal faces and deliberately visible brushwork are intended to create a sense of proximity. Their political function, however, emerges only through the combination of image, biography, institutional presentation and the authority attached to Bush’s name.

It is precisely this authority that makes The Call of Freedom both remarkable and deeply contradictory. Bush states that the book is intended to remind those who live in freedom of their responsibility towards those who do not. Yet its moral message cannot be entirely separated from the history of its author: his presidency encompassed the Iraq War, the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and the CIA interrogation programme, whose methods were documented by the United States Senate as brutal and ineffective. The portraits do not refute this history, nor can they reconcile it. Nevertheless, it would be too simple to dismiss the project merely as a retrospective exercise in image rehabilitation. Bush uses painting as an instrument of political remembrance, bringing visibility to people whose stories can easily disappear from public consciousness. The book consequently poses an uncomfortable question that extends far beyond the artistic quality of its images: Can a painting speak credibly for freedom when the person holding the brush is himself part of its historical contradictions?

The Call of Freedom: Portraits of Political Prisoners and Dissidents
Foreword by Natan Sharansky
Crown Publishing Group / Penguin Random House
Publication date: March 9, 2027
Hardcover: US$42
Signed deluxe edition: US$250
Accompanying exhibition opening March 9, 2027
George W. Bush Presidential Museum
2943 SMU Boulevard, Dallas, Texas 75205, USA

George W. Bush, 2003. Following the end of his presidency, Bush developed a sustained painting practice that he now connects with political and social concerns. Photo: Eric Draper / The White House. Public Domain.

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