Mugshot and mask. Trump’s official portrait

Music and dance can be ambiguous and ambivalent. Truth, as it has traditionally been understood by philosophy and democracy, cannot. “Post-truth philosopher[s]” such as Bruno Latour and a number of other ‘constructivist’ or even ‘deconstructive’, primarily postmodern thinkers are the exception that confirm this rule.⁸⁵ To give an example of the ambivalence of music: Lorenzo da Ponte’s opera libretto Così fan tutte revolves around erotic entanglements, immoral relationship experiments and marital deceit. Mozart wrote the appropriate ‘erotically vibrating’⁸⁶ music to accompany it. However, this did not stop an anonymous arranger from turning the musical material from Così fan tutte into a Catholic mass, the “Mass after Così fan tutte” in C major, Köchel-Verzeichnis Appendix 235e. One is amazed when listening to it, but has no objections to the relationship between the music and the mass text.

Trump is also a master of ambivalence, and not only when he translates a Q&A format into music. There is no question that Trump has brought iconic formulas of unambiguously heroic pathos to the stage with legendary flair and courage, for example in the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024. At the same time, however, Trump is also a master of ambivalence. This can be seen in the official portrait of the 47th US President taken by Daniel Torok (which was replaced by another at the beginning of June 2025⁸⁷). Kelly Grovier described this first Trump II portrait as follows: “Carefully choreographed, every aspect of the official photo is calibrated for maximum impact—from the almost metallic, crepuscular light in which Trump’s face is ignited from below to his severe, asymmetrical squint.” Grovier takes the “fiercely furrowed, lock-eyed, and, yes, trumpant glare” as an opportunity to compare Trump’s portrait with a painting by the Italian Baroque painter Salvator Rosa entitled—of all things—“Philosophy”.⁸⁸

However, Trump’s gaze in particular also brings to mind iconological references to antiquity. Eric Csapo writes about the almost frontal head pose that Trump shows in his portrait:

Archaic and Classical Greek iconography almost never show frontal faces [...].[] One exception is certain predatory beasts: the Gorgon whose sight turns her victims to stone; the snake whose name seems to come from its fierce glare (δέρκομαι, δράκων [dérkomai, drákōn]);[] the sphinx; the siren; the owl which mesmerizes its victims (and is even said to kill them with its fiery gaze);[] the lion and especially the panther (or pardalis). The latter’s “bright eye” has “shining pupils which beneath their lids emit a steely glare (γλαυκιόωσι [glaukióōsi]) [...].[] What these animals all have in common is just this paralyzing “steely glare,” glaukotes, a quality connected with the name of the owl (glaux), and associated [...] with the war-goddess, “steely-eyed” (glaukopis) Athena [...].⁸⁹

Trump as a steely-eyed predator: this is another interpretation of his portrait. However, there is also the striking similarity between the (first) official Trump II portrait and his mugshot taken in the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office on August 24, 2023 (which he had rehearsed and practiced for days and with which he was highly satisfied⁹⁰). In fact, Daniel Torok’s portrait not only seems to quote the mugshot (which was hanging on the wall outside the Oval Office anyway)⁹¹, but looks like a photoshopped version of it.

But how is it possible for a mugshot to become a presidential portrait, and what does that mean? Once again, Sennett provides a clue: they are masks.

Notes

1. ⁸⁵Cf. e.g. Ava Kofman: Bruno Latour, the Post-Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science, in:www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/magazine/bruno-latour-post-truth-philosopher-science.html (6/6/2025).
2. ⁸⁶This expression is similar, albeit following Baudelaire’s “Je sens vibrer en moi toutes les passions” and with a view to Wagner, in Richard Dreyfus: Wagner and the Erotic Impulse, Cambridge and London 2010, p. 23.
3. ⁸⁷ https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/03/politics/trump-new-official-portrait-white-house;www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/arts/design/trump-portrait-presidential.html (6.6.2025).
4. ⁸⁸www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250120-donald-trumps-official-portrait-the-17th-century-painting-that-unlocks-this-mysterious-image (6/6/2025).
5. ⁸⁹Eric Csapo: Riding the Phallus for Dionysus: Iconology, Ritual, and Gender-Role De/Construction, in: Phoenix 51,3/4 (Autumn-Winter) 1997, pp. 253-295, p. 256.
6. ⁹⁰“He’d been practicing it for days—on the golf course, in the mirror, in front of the legal team, and among Bedminster members. [...] He was in and out in no time—with the mug shot taken in an instant. But he was over the moon: He loved the picture. ‘This looks so cool, this is a classic, this is iconic,’ he kept pronouncing. [...] ‘What’s the caption?’ he asked. [...]—‘Never surrender! Trump added.” Wolff, All of Nothing, p. 55f.
7. ⁹¹https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-mug-shot-hung-oval-office-photos-show/story?id=118829928 (6/6/2025).