SLIM TALL & ERECT
Portraits of the Presidents
Alex Forman
I sometimes, in my sprightly moments, consider myself...as the dictator at the head of a commonwealth. In this little state I can discover all the great geniuses, all the surprising actions and revolutions of the great world in miniature. –John Adams
One day in summer, I ran across a small wooden box at a flea market. It was filled with 2-inch tall plastic figurines of the American Presidents, from Washington to Nixon. They had been collected individually, hand painted, and lovingly stored together by some unknown person (showing the simple craze of the collector). One thing that struck me about these souvenir objects—my “‘models’”—was how even in miniature, their gestures belied attitudes of entitlement; their poses, perfect public bearing. Intended to glorify the men, they symbolize the way that presidents lose their individuality as they become defined by an institution. James Madison was five foot two inches, our shortest president. Lincoln was six foot four, our tallest. But both men, here, are two-inches tall.
Restoring these miniatures to life-size, I explore multiple representations of our national leaders: they are portrayed variously as stately and vulnerable, humane and even otherworldly. In an uncanny way, they are a reflection on how the masculine image of the president is recorded and reproduced. There is a kind of cross between the pained humanity of the person and being stuck on these pedestals. This tension exists in the work. By looking at the imperfections of being in miniature it brings to bear the humanity of these figures. With my prints, I seek to re-humanize the figures. I have shot them in natural light, in abstracted, individual settings, using a view camera and Polaroid p/n film. I then scan the negatives, enlarge them, and make digital prints using carbon pigment on watercolor paper.
Through my research — I’ve drawn on biographies, letters, medical histories, and children’s books — I’ve sought to locate the men in their individual, personal drama. Some were outstanding statesmen. Some overcame weakness — from illiteracy to incestual love to chronic diarrhea. Others were terribly miscast. I am drawn to the details that reveal personal traits and character: two of our presidents were illiterate until their wives taught them how to read (A. Johnson and Fillmore); Hayes had an unnatural affection for his sister, Fanny; three of our presidents were considered homosexual (Lincoln, Arthur, Buchanan); most of our presidents have been distantly related; and just two were actually born in log cabins.
Surprisingly often we get a big man just when we need one. –Carl Sandburg
Looking at the detailed miniature, values become condensed and enriched. Moments of wonder also occur. Madison winks. Wilson doubles over in laughter. As I enlarge the images, the figures fill with life but also take on aspects of the grotesque. We distort these men by attributing greatness to them that is an exaggeration of their natural state. It is an unnerving reflection on our society and culture, the role of masculinity and of the presidency itself.
I have named this project Tall, Slim & Erect after a phrase that appears constantly in the descriptions of presidents: “tall, slim and of erect carriage.”
–Alex Forman
http://tallslimerect.com
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MARTIN VAN BUREN, 8th, 1881-85
Van Buren was the first of only five Presidents not of British descent.
So skilled was he in political manipulation that he earned the nickname, the ‘Little Magician.’
He served Jackson as Secretary of State, Vice President, phrasemaker, and confidant. Their relationship was so close that a tired Jackson once considered resigning from the Presidency during his second term, permitting Van Buren to replace him. In short, there would have been no President Jackson, as we know him, without Martin Van Buren. 1a
His soldierly posture and immaculate grooming made Martin Van Buren appear taller than his 5 feet 6 inches.1b
Old Tip he wears a homespun suit,
– He has no ruffled shirt – wirt, wirt;
But Mat he has the golden pate,
– And he’s a little squirt – wirt, wirt. 2
When Van Buren was President the city of Washington had a population of about forty thousand. Pigs and chickens roamed the streets at will; slaves were sold openly; the terrain was swampy, malaria-ridden and crisscrossed by cowpaths and open sewers. Elegant [Van Buren] rolled around Washington in a magnificent olive-green coach with silver-mounted harness and liveried footmen. 3
d. July 29, 1862 ( Kinderhook, NY), of Asthma.
1 The American Heritage Book of the Presidents and Famous Americans. 12-volume edition. NewYork: Dell Publishing Co., 1967. [a]p. 249;
1b p. 258.
2 James, Marquis. Andrew Jackson: Portrait of a President. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1937. [a]p.450
3 Durant, John and Alice. Pictorial History of the American Presidents. New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1955. p.72
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POLK, 11th, 1845-49
American Historian Carl R. Fish said of James K. Polk : He was the least conspicuous man who had ever been nominated for President.1
As for the Mexican war, Polk was both vilified as an imperialist and hailed as a patriot. In a house resolution, the war was branded as “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President.” Abraham Lincoln, then a young congressman from Illinois voted in favor of this resolution.2
The halls of Montezuma were invaded on September 14, 1847. They got their revenge on Polk, who suffered from chronic diarrhea throughout his term in office and died of it three months out of office.
Polk explained his hand-shaking technique in his diary. He explained that a man should : shake and not be shaken, grip and not be gripped, taking care always to squeeze the hand of his adversary as hard as he squeezed him.... I could generally anticipate when I was to have a strong grip, and that when I observed a strong man approaching I generally took advantage of him by being a little quicker than he was and seizing him by the tips of his fingers, giving him a hearty shake, and thus preventing him from getting a full grip upon me. 3
d. June 15, 1849. Polk left most of his estate to his wife with the request that she free their slaves upon her death.
1 Durant, John and Alice. Pictorial History of the American Presidents. New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1955.p. 83
2 Durant, John and Alice. Pictorial History of the American Presidents. New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1955. p. 85
3 http://www.doctorzebra.com/prez/z_x11shake_g.htm
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PIERCE, 14th, 1853-57
Of medium height, slim and erect, 1a Franklin Pierce was the most unambitious man ever to run for office. 1b
Nathaniel Hawthorn, his lifelong friend, said of Pierce: I have come seriously to the conclusion that he has in him many of the chief elements of a great ruler. His talents are administrative, he has a subtle faculty of making affairs roll onward according to his will, and of influencing their course without showing any trace of his action...He is deep, deep, deep. 2a
Two months before his inauguration, Pierce and his wife were in a train that derailed and toppled over an embankment. They sustained slight physical injuries but their son was practically decapitated in front of their eyes. He was their third son to die. The Pierces were wracked with guilt. Mrs. Pierce decided that God had taken their son so her husband would have no family distractions while President. Pierce believed it was punishment for his sins. 2b
Pierce was the first president to commit his inaugural speech to memory.
Pierce was an alcoholic, as everyone close to him was well aware; a fondness for drink was not something to hide in those times.3 At the end of his term, when asked what a President should do after leaving office, he sighed: There’s nothing left...but to get drunk.2b
His wife died and the next spring he and Hawthorne went off together on a trip to the White Mountains—an attempt to restore the writer’s health. But Hawthorne died one night in a bedroom adjoining Pierce’s. At Hawthorne’s funeral the former President was pointedly snubbed by the New England literati and was not included among the pallbearers. A broken man, Pierce himself died on October 8, 1869. 3 He was 64.
1 Durant, John and Alice. Pictorial History of the American Presidents. New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1955. [a]p. 100; [b]p. 101
2 The American Heritage Book of the Presidents and Famous Americans. 12-volume edition. NewYork: Dell Publishing Co., 1967. [a]p. 367; [b]p.370
3 http://www.doctorzebra.com/prez/g14.htm
4 MacMahon, Edward B. and Curry, Leonard. Medical Cover-Ups in the White House. Washington, DC: Farragut, 1987. p. 19
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GARFIELD , 20th, 1881
James A Garfield was one of the few scholarly men of the Presidency. A lover of poetry and the classics, he wrote passable verse and could read and write in Latin and Greek. (He used to entertain his friends by simultaneously writing Latin with one hand and Greek with the other.) 1
Garfield was elected president at age 49. He was six feet in height and weighed 185 pounds, and was characterized as ‘very strong, atheletic and energetic.’ 2
On July 2, 1881, Leon F. Guiteau fired two bullets from his Bulldog .44 at Garfield. One caused a superficial arm wound. The other entered in the right posterior thorax, fractured rib 11, traveled leftward and anteriorly into the L1 vertebral body, then lodged about 2.5 inches to the left of the spine, below the inferior border of the pancreas. (President Garfield’s spine is held by the National Museum of Health and Medicine and apparently shows the path of the bullet.) The whereabouts of this second bullet was a mystery until the autopsy, despite even the efforts of Alexander Graham Bell who used his newly invented ‘induction balance,’ better known now as a metal detector, to attempt locating the bullet. 3
For some period after the shooting, Garfield was fed rectally.3 It is likely that he died of malnutrition.
Garfield ’s original wound was 3.5 inches long, and ended with the bullet lodged in a harmless part of the abdomen. The wound was probed by the fingers of numerous physicians during the rest of Garfield’s life so that, by the time of his death, the wound track was 20 inches long and oozing pus.3
Garfield ’s medical bill was $18,500. 3
At his trial, the assassin Guiteau admitted shooting the President, but denied killing him. Instead, he claimed that Garfield’s physicians killed him. Guiteau was executed because his defense was not strong enough.
1 Durant, John and Alice. Pictorial History of the American Presidents. New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1955. p.168
2 Deppisch, LM. Homeopathic medicine and presidential health: homeopathic influences upon two Ohio presidents. Pharos. Fall 1997;60:5-10.
3 http://www.doctorzebra.com/prez/g20.htm#zree3
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McKINLEY, 25th, 1897-1901
“William McKinley, the third martyred President within a space of thirty-six years, was the last Civil War veteran to become president.” 1a
McKinley was shot in the abdomen by anarchist Leon F. Czolgosz who said, “I didn’t believe one man should have so much service and another man should have none.”
McKinley told me [Chicagoan H.H. Kohlsaat] that they were trying to force him into declaring war with Spain. As he said this, he broke down and wept as I have never seen anyone weep in my life. His whole body was shaken with convulsive sobs. He ceased after a while, and later, when he had dried his eyes, he said he felt that he should go in to see his guests again. He asked me when we got into the light if his eyes were red, and I told him they were, but if he blew his nose very hard just as he entered, the redness of his eyes would be attributed to that cause. He did so, and I never heard any of the guests, with whom I mingled freely, comment on the fact that the President had been crying. 2
McKinley’s handshake was famous. To save wear and tear on his right hand at receptions, the President developed what came to be called the McKinley grip. In receiving lines, he would smile as a man came by, take his right hand and squeeze it warmly before his own hand got caught in a hard grip, hold the man’s elbow with his left hand, and then swiftly pull him along and be ready to beam on the next guest. 3
McKinley’s wife, Ida, was subject to headaches and seizures. Every day at exactly three o’clock, McKinley stepped to his office window and waved a handkerchief at his wife. Ida, who spent her time crocheting bedroom slippers (she reportedly made thousands of them), insisted on accompanying her husband to social affairs. [5a] In order to attend to her, if necessary, McKinley broke tradition and sat next to her at official dinners. For example, one evening at dinner with William Taft, “a peculiar hissing sound” came from Mrs. McKinley. McKinley quickly picked up a napkin, dropped it over her face, and continued talking. Mrs. McKinley recovered a few moments later and resumed her part in the conversation where she had left off. 3
As the wounded President was caught and supported by his aides, he whispered to his secretary, My wife—be careful, Cortelyou, how you tell her—oh, be careful. 1b
McKinley’s last words were to his wife, Ida: Nearer my God to thee, Nearer to Thee. 5b
d. September 14, 1901, of Gangrene.
1 Durant, John and Alice. Pictorial History of the American Presidents. New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1955. [a.] p. 198. [b] p. 204.
2 http://www.doctorzebra.com/prez/z_x25cry_g.htm
3 http://www.doctorzebra.com/prez/z_x25shake_g.htm
4 Boller, Paul F. Jr. Presidential Anecdotes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. p. 189-190
5 The American Heritage Book of the Presidents and Famous Americans. 12-volume edition. NewYork: Dell Publishing Co., 1967. [a]p. 637; [b] p. 642
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