Donald Trump continues to exist in a parallel universe, though not invisibly. While he lives in his own world, you can still see and hear him bloviating. Joe Biden is the polar opposite. He doesn’t show off even when he has a bragging right.
The president has overturned Trump’s decree that said all visual art added to public buildings in DC must portray our Founding Fathers or our history and also be representational, not abstract. And public buildings must adhere to classical design as established by the founders.
But there’s nothing all-American in the classical ideal because it wasn’t ours, it was Old Rome’s.
And when it comes to Founding Fathers, it was Thomas Jefferson who wanted the U.S. Capitol modeled after the Parthenon, a Roman temple, complete with a circular domed rotunda.
D.C. architecture is a Roman holiday
Trump’s taste in art also was European. He boasts of having paid $10 million for Renoir’s "La Loge," which portrays a man and woman at a Paris theater. Not an American anywhere in view. The original painting hangs in London’s The Courtauld Institute of Art. Of course, he’s not known for distinguishing between real and fake.
Then there’s Trump’s beloved Mara-a-Lago. Granted it’s not a government building, but he has called it the “Southern White House.” And the design, far from his "ideals upon which our nation was founded" decree, is an Old World mix of styles from Spain, Italy and Portugal.
When socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post had Mar-a-Lago had built for herself in 1923, after traveling abroad visiting the palaces, estates, and great museums of the continent, she sought their look for her home.
You’re not in Florida anymore
To that end, she collected architectural remnants from her tours outside the U.S. to incorporate in her house.
At the time, the architecture of Addison Mizner was all the rage in Palm Beach.
Using the cloistered curves and winsome arches of Mediterranean building, the style became known as Mediterranean Revival and Mar-a-Lago is its poster child.
Mizner's first Mediterranean Revival building was the Everglades Club in Palm Beach, which a member of the Singer sewing machine family bankrolled in 1919.
When the rest of the rich and famous in Palm Beach saw what Mizner had wrought – a place brimming with Old Europe’s balconies, terraces, towers, tile roofs, and courtyards – they sought him out for more of the same.
With courtyards enriched with statuary and ornamental pools, the only thing missing are the Vestal Virgins of Old Rome.
Mar-a-Lago is a fake Riviera fit for a fake president
Mediterranean Revival was such a steal from Old Europe styles that it became a kind of architectural con-game to sell properties to Americans in search of the Riviera on U.S. soil. Trump bought into this – a fake Riviera without a classical line in sight.
Combine that with all the borrowings in D.C. from Old Rome, and Trump’s pro-American dictate was a joke.
