This my reaction as well. The portrayal of the man himself is excellent. The expression on his face shows welcome and wisdom.
But the wall of bright color around him is distracting. It’s not even behind him, it’s creeping over him, like he’s about to be overwhelmed. There’s no depth to the plants, no floor, no distance. I feel like I could use photoshop to desaturate, defocus, and shade the background to vastly improve the image.
I think the way that his left hand is drawn so oversized is making it look weird. It’s the same size as his face.
I get what the artist was doing with the dress, and think that’s the best part of the composition. But her left arm looks like her hand would hang somewhere around her knees… if where her knee was positioned didn’t make it look like her thighs and calves were each as long as her torso. Actually, there’s something about the way the dress hangs on her that makes her torso look like a barrel. So I guess I think the best part of the composition is the skirt of the dress.
Basically, I think both needed to be either more realistic, or more abstracted; this in-between just looks off.
Yeah, her portrait is just compelling as art. For his portrait, my first thought was a) it looks like he’s sitting in front of the ivy covered outfiled wall at Wrigely Field and b) that can’t be right, he’s a White Sox fan.
People do remember that Obama went to Harvard law school, an Ivy League school, and taught law at University of Chicago, another university famous for ivy-covered buildings, right? 
Wrigley Field isn’t the only place in the world, or even Chicago, with ivy on the wall. 
Not picking on madmonk28, the Chicago news is full of people making similar comments.
As art I prefer Michelle’s even though it doesn’t look like her. I would think Barack’s was okay too if the first thing I didn’t think of when I saw the greenery was a different sort of greenery than ivy which is slowly becoming more legally acceptable across America, and even though it doesn’t actually look like that at all, I can’t unsee it.
I don’t think these are unstuffy paintings, either. Any style that has been around for around 100 years counts as traditional.
Well, perhaps they should have gotten Matt Groening to do the official Obama portrait. Though, I might be a little anxious about him getting the eye count right.
Oh, come on, you know you just have to link to something like that.
The portrait background isn’t even ivy. Ivy has a distinctive 3 lobed leaf shape. If the artist wanted to depict an ivy covered wall, he would have painted ivy. And of course, ivy does not produce colorful flowers. The portrait background seems to be a generic depiction of nature.
He didn’t pay for them, but Obama did select the artist and gave him input into how he wanted his portrait to look. Although he joked that he wanted the artist to take away the grey hair and do something about the ears. Obama seemed quite pleased with the result.
The National Portrait Gallery often has several portraits of each President, but only one is designated as the “official” portrait, I believe. Picture 1 is JFK’s official White House, not NPG, portrait. Picture 2 is JFK’s official NPG portrait, as shown in the OP’s link. Picture 3 is Nixon’s official NPG portrait, also as shown in the OP’s link. Picture 4 isn’t shown in the OP’s link, but I have seen it myself at the NPG (it’s quite striking, in person), and believe it is indeed Clinton’s official NPG portrait.
It is. Amy Sherald regularly paints portraits of African-Americans, and uses grey for the skin tone.
I think that part of it is that he has six fingers on his left hand, it makes it look weird.
That doesn’t surprise me at all. Obama was a Chicago politician and if you were to ask people to link Chicago and ivy, I’d guess most would say Wrigley Field. The portrait has grown on me (no pun intended), but I love her portrait.
Thanks so much! So now I see, and that makes sense. There is an Official NPG portrait and an Official WH Portrait. Got it!
So if these are NPG ones for the Obamas, has he had his WH portrait done yet?
That would explain why he is left handed, then.
I like that the one of Barack really captures his image, but the background just messes it up for me, it’s much too busy. The one of Michelle doesn’t look at all like her and I don’t get it because she’s a pretty woman, I don’t understand why she wasn’t painted as herself.
I feel that both portraits are inviting mockery, especially to the Internet crowd. The Obamas should have commissioned two sets; one “normal” White House portraits, and then the other set, the ivy and surrealistic-one. The ivy background doesn’t let the viewer focus on Obama easily. Hard to believe this was seriously done.
I think they’ve both conclude to hell with their critics. It doesn’t matter what they do, the racists will hate them, so the decided their stepping into the 21st century and we’re free to join them.
Not really. As with all art, it is just a matter of taste.
The public either likes the art or they don’t no matter who the subjects are. I would venture to say some of the worst critics have been people who loved the Obamas dearly and just wanted something that was their interpretation of dignity, or whatever other trait they wanted to see conveyed. If people find these images lacking in any way or parody-worthy it doesn’t mean the viewer is not forward thinking or has a closed mind.
As for the art styles themselves, others here have mentioned Dali, Gaugin and Klimt (that was me), so I wouldn’t say those artists exactly scream 21st century. The Obamas aren’t even the first ones to go the unconventional route, either. See the de Kooning portrait of Kennedy and pixelated Bill Clinton already linked upthread.
I would be very surprised if it turned out that a viewer’s political leanings did not impact her opinion of the portraits.