Existing comment:
A Secretary of State
2007
Monoprint
Condeleeza Rice (1954-) was the first female National Security Advisor during the first George W. Bush administration, and the first female African-American Secretary of State, succeeding Colin Powell during Bush's second term. As Rice came to passionately defend the questionable practices of the Bus administration's prosecution of the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, Oliphant's daily cartoons cast Rice's role in an increasingly harsh light. Beginning as an angry bird with buck-teeth squawking on Bush's shoulder, by 2005, Rice was a voluptuous, leather-clad sexual dominatrix cracking a whip.
This portrait positions Rice squarely face forward with head and shoulders awkwardly low in the composition like a passport photo -- perhaps appropriate for one who constantly traveled as Secretary of State. The print expressively weights the image at the top, so that a large lush area of black hovers over Rice's head as if to suggest an experience of constant pressure, such as the weight of the job, or the responsibility that comes with being the first in a position. |