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Interrogating the Visual Culture of Trumpism book cover

1st Edition

Interrogating the Visual Culture of Trumpism

Edited By Grant Hamming, Natalie E. Phillips Copyright 2025
    222 Pages 14 Color & 25 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

     Bringing together scholars from art history, visual studies, and related disciplines, this edited volume asks why Trumpism looks the way it does and what that look means for American – and global – society.

     

    Grouped into six categories, the essays in this volume tackle some of the most perplexing–and urgent–aspects of the Trumpist visual project. Two of the most striking aspects of that project are its use of novel commodity forms, including the iconic red baseball caps, as well as its embrace of social media. Trump’s outlandish persona and striking physicality have lent themselves to caricature both from his critics and, perhaps more surprisingly, his supporters. That physicality–as well as his movement’s hearkening back to a (mostly imagined) era of mid-twentieth-century prosperity–has also brought gender and the body into sharp focus. Perhaps second only to the aforementioned red hat is Trumpism’s vigorous use of interventions into public space, including traditional campaign signs as well as flags and other ad hoc visual and architectural materials. Finally, there were the events of January 6, 2021, when many of Trumpism’s most outré visual and cultural preoccupations exploded from the shadows onto television screens across the country. Taken as a whole, the essays in this book examine Trumpist visuality from the seemingly trivial to the starkly horrifying, as well as offering a measured sense of the various resistances and responses that have characterised artistic responses to Trump from the beginning of his prominence.

     

    The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual culture, American studies, and cultural and media studies.

    Contents

     

    List of Figures

    List of Contributors

    Acknowledgements

     

    Part 1: Introduction

     

    1. Interrogating the Visual Culture of Trumpism

    Grant Hamming and Natalie Phillips

     

    Part 2: Social Media and the Internet

     

    2. Towards a Contrarian Postmodernism: Elon Musk and the Ends of Historical Allegory

    Grant Hamming

     

    3. The Politics of Bigfoot Porn, or the Relationship between Sasquatch and the Far Right

    Jessica Landau

     

    4. Trumpism, NFTs, and the Cultural Politics of 21st Century Kitsch

    Dorothy Barenscott

     

    5. The Worship of a Golden Chair: Patterns and Implications of Warhammer 40.000 References in Trumpist Propaganda

    F.S. Schönberg

     

    Part 3: Commodification and Consumption

     

    6. Where’s the Beef: American Portraiture, Stock Photography, and The Visual Politics of Trump Steaks

    Annie Ronan

     

    7. Cassandra's Curse: Foreshadowing the Trumpian Era - A conversation with Andrew Krasnow

    Joseph Phelan with Tobey Crockett

     

    8. “Serious Balls”: Donald Trump as Phallic Symbol in Pop Presidential Paraphernalia 

    Jane Caputi

     

    9. Seeing Red: A MAGA Re-Brand

    Kate Kretz

     

    Part 4: Portraiture and Caricature

     

    10. Edel Rodriguez takes on Donald Trump: The Time Magazine Covers

    Natalie E. Phillips

     

    11. Trump’s Court Artist

    Jennifer A. Greenhill

     

    12. Drain

    Andrew Ellis Johnson and Susanne Slavick

     

    13. Transmedial Trumpism: Strongman Politics Via Popular Caricature 

    William S. Chavez and Shyam K. Sriram

     

    Part 5: Public Space 

     

    14. Making American Architecture Great Again? Executive Order 13967

    Toby Norris

     

    15. Postcommodity’s Aesthetics of Place: An Intervention into Trump’s Picture of the Borderlands

    Jessica Orzulak

     

    16. The Visual World of Trumpism and Rural MAGA Warriors in Northern California

    Shawn Schwaller

     

    Part 6: American Sacred Spaces

     

    17. ‘Fake News’ from the Oval Office between the Obama and Trump Administrations, or so we thought

    Roger J. Crum

     

    18. From Inauguration Crowds to Capitol Mobs: Photography and Fact in the Post-Truth Era

    Erin Pauwels

     

    19. The Flags that Flew on January 6th: DIY Populist Art Plays with the Past

    Justin Patch


    Index

     

    Biography

    Grant Hamming is a Collegiate Assistant Professor and Program Director of the Rhizome Living-Learning Community at Virginia Tech. He holds a Ph.D. in the History of Art from Stanford University. His research and teaching interests include sustainability, graphic design, and transnationalism in antebellum American art.

     

    Natalie E. Phillips is Associate Professor of Art History and Affiliate Faculty in Women’s, Gender, and African American Studies at Ball State University. She received her Ph.D. in Visual Studies from the University of California, Irvine in 2009, and specializes in contemporary art and visual culture.

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