Last year, President Trump announced a redesigned white, red, and blue paint job for the forthcoming new Air Force One, scheduled to begin use in 2024. The new aircraft will be slightly longer, faster, and more environmentally friendly than the current AF1, and Trump told ABC the new livery design he proposed would look better, saying, “the baby blue doesn’t fit with us.” But could President-elect Biden scrap the change before the aircraft goes into use?
“Easily,” said Richard Aboulafia, an executive at Teal Group, an aerospace and defense industry analysis company. "When Trump changed it, it was clearly just to resemble his own aircraft," Aboulafia told Politico. "New coats of paint are very easily applied.”
The current baby blue color scheme has been in use since the Kennedy administration and was created by famed industrial designer Raymond Loewy, who also created logos for Exxon, Shell, and the U.S. Postal Service.
A 1962 Air Force One sketch by Raymond Loewy. Credit: MoMA
JFK originally selected a red-and-gold concept sketch of Loewy’s but asked for it to be blue instead because it was his favorite color, according to the Museum of Modern Art. Caslon, the typeface used to spell out “United States of America,” was chosen by Kennedy because of its similarity to the letterform seen on the Declaration of Independence.
Trump has been added to this art installation about losing presidential candidates
Credit: Hunter Schwarz
Monument to the Unelected, an installation by artist Nina Katchadourian made up of imagined campaign yard signs for America’s losing presidential candidates throughout history that I wrote about last month, was updated this weekend with a new sign for Trump.
The new sign was placed on Saturday by first-time voter Kasidy Cintron, a 26-year-old Arizona business owner who voted by mail. “I never really believed that my vote mattered before, but this year showed me why it does,” Cintron said.
The exhibition first debuted in 2008 at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and is updated every four years with a new sign. It’s currently up in Phoenix, as well as eight other locations including in California, New York, and Ohio. First-time voters installed the signs at all eight locations, and the update was broadcast online and hosted by Katchadourian, who is currently in Berlin.
The simple blue-and-white Trump sign was inspired by a sign for Ron Ray, a mayoral candidate in Beacon, New York. SMoCA registrar Carrie Tovar, the Phoenix homeowner who hosted the installation, said every sign’s design is intentional, including Trump’s. “Some of them are very plain and they’re meant to be that way,” Tovar said.
Katchadourian designed a sign for Biden too, and both were printed off in anticipation of results being called, but the Biden sign will now be destroyed without being shown publicly.
Many of the signs are meant to be tongue-in-cheek, including a sign for Aaron Burr, which includes the full U.S. map of the lower 48 contiguous states, even though Burr ran in 1800 when there were just 16 states, and a green-and-blue environmental-style sign is used for Al Gore, even though his environmental activism didn’t begin in earnest until after his campaign.
The installation will remain up in Phoenix until December 3. You can find the locations of this and the other installations at the SMoCA website and view more photos on the Yello Instagram account.
The team behind Biden’s victory drones also does drone shows for the Eagles, Xbox
Biden’s victory celebration on November 7 in Wilmington, Delaware, wowed audiences with fireworks and a drone show set to Coldplay’s “Sky Full of Stars.” The 200 drones were arranged to show Biden’s logo (the original Brother 1816 version), an outline of the contiguous United States, and the words “President Elect.” The show was the work of a small Philadelphia startup called Verge Aero.
Founded by CEO Nils Thorjussen, Verge Aero employs just three engineers and several technicians, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal. The company has also done work for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Xbox Series X, but the Biden show was especially complex because of the security approvals needed to fly drones in restricted air space above the next POTUS.
Similar drone shows by Intel cost $50,000 for 100 drones, and Thorjussen said his company charges similar rates.
The charred Melania statue from Slovenia went on display in America
Credit: Allouche Gallery
The wood statue of first lady Melania Trump that was burned by an unknown arsonist in July has recently been shown at the Allouche Gallery in New York. While the face and waving arm now look like burnt match heads, you can still tell it’s FLOTUS based on the blue Ralph Lauren Collection dress she wore to the inauguration. The statue was carved by chainsaw sculpture Ales Zupevc and installed in Sevnica, Slovenia, last year.
The now-charred statue is nearly six feet tall and was commissioned by American conceptual artist Brad Downey who showed it as part of an exhibition titled “Melania and the Broken Feedback Loop.” The exhibition also included three other similarly sized versions of the statue in plaster, silicone, and plastic, plus a mini version in bronze. There were also two films shown, one about the creation of the statue and another about media coverage of it.
Replica Melania statues in (from left to right) plaster, silicone, plastic, and bronze. Credit: Allouche Gallery
It’s always interesting to see how artists incorporate vandalism into their work, whether it’s intentional, like Banksy’s shredded Girl With Balloon, or an artist rolling with the punches and allowing vandalism to be part of the work, like Downey did here.
A bunch of historic NASA photos, including the first space selfie, are on auction
First self portrait in space, by Buzz Aldrin. Credit: courtesy Christie’s
Christie’s is offering more than 2,000 photos from space as part of its “Voyage to Another World” auction that runs until Thursday.
The photos come from the private collection of Victor Martin-Malburet, and include shots like a photo of the first U.S. space walk in 1965, Buzz Aldrin’s 1966 selfie from space, and the first human-taken photo of an Earthrise, by William Anders in 1968.
First US Spacewalk, Ed White’s EVA over Texas by James McDivitt (left) and the first human-taken photograph of Earthrise by William Anders (right). Credit: courtesy Christie’s
“Through their cameras, the astronauts-turned-artists were able to convey to mankind the beauty and profundity of their experience into space, forever changing the way we see ourselves and our place in the universe,” Christie’s said in a statement.
Bids for many of the photos are currently in the thousands, while the first Earthrise photo is expected to go for as high as $37,800. If you’re looking for cheaper options, NASA has an online gallery with photos that are generally free to use if you’re looking to add some new space-related art to your home or office.
Subscribe to Yello for the latest news on the culture, branding, and visual rhetoric of politics, delivered each week:
