Subjective Art

STATE OF TEXAS
OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR

GEORGE W. BUSH
GOVERNOR

MEMORANDUM

TO: Hard Working Staff Members
FROM: Governor
DATE: April 3, 1995

I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission.

My very close personal friend from Midland, Joe. J. O'Neill, III, recently loaned me a portrait entitled "A Charge to Keep" by W.H.D. Koerner. This beautiful painting will hang on my wall for the next four years.

The reason I bring this up is that the painting is based upon the Charles Wesley hymn "A Charge to Keep I Have". I am particularly impressed by the second verse of this hymn. The second verse goes like this:

"To serve the present age, my calling to fulfill;
O may it all my powers engage to do my Master's will."

This is our mission. This verse captures our spirit.

Joe was inspired to make this generous loan during the church service preceding the inaugural ceremonies. It was in this church service when we sang the hymn "A Charge to Keep I Have".

When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.

Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for your service to our State. God Bless Texas!


So taken was Bush with this seemingly prophetic oil on canvas that he aptly entitled his autobiography A Charge To Keep.

Clearly self-identifying with the lead rider in the picture (and you must admit, there is an uncanny resemblance), he took the guy to be "a kind of Christian cowboy, an embodiment of indomitable vigor, courage, and moral clarity," according to Jacob Weisberg's book The Bush Tragedy.

"Bush subsequently took the painting to Washington, hung it in the Oval Office, and continued to tell the painting's inspiring story, adding embellishments:

He came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination."

DELUSIONAL: a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary.

Not that we really needed further evidence of our Commander-in-Chief's blinder mentality, but this particular example is rather amusing.

Truth be told, Koerner's eerily Bush-resemblant rider is not in fact "a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail," ostensibly on Divine mission to proliferate righteousness and all things just.

Hardly.

Those other dudes in the painting? Despite Bush's artistic interpretation, are not exactly troops rallied and ready to fight the good fight. In fact, they're trying to string up the guy's thieving cowboy ass!

The original piece, commissioned by The Saturday Evening Post, is of a horse thief fleeing a lynch mob, selected to illustrate a Western short story entitled "The Slipper Tongue."

The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught and then escapes, lynch mob hot on his heels. The image is actually in point of fact a depiction of a fleeing fugitive.

By the way, The Saturday Evening Post staff liked the picture so much that it recycled it a year later to illustrate yet another of their short stories, “Ways That Are Dark.”

The caption under the illustration? “Bandits Move About From Town to Town, Pillaging Whatever They Can Find.”