Opinion
Guest Essay
All Hail Our
Rococo President!
By Emily
Keegin
Ms. Keegin
is a photo editor and creative consultant.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/opinion/trump-oval-office-rococo.html
May 27, 2025
This is an
installment of Visual Studies, a series that explores how images move through
and shape culture.
Lately the
American president has been spending quite a bit of time redecorating the Oval
Office. The results can only be called a gilded rococo hellscape. If our
leader’s appearance is a depiction of the country …
Is this us?
Since the
start of President Trump’s Oval Office decorating spree in February, there has
been a steady torrent of articles condemning his design choices. And to be
sure, the redesign has been … significant.
There is a
parade of golden objects that march across the mantel, relegating the
traditional Swedish ivy to a greenhouse. Gilded Rococo wall appliqués, nearly
identical to the ones at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, are stuck to the
fireplace and office walls with the same level of aesthetic consideration a
child gives her doll’s face before covering it in nail polish.
In what
appears to be a bid to tie the room together, gilded floral onlays form a chain
around the room’s cornice. Even the doorknobs are highly polished, so the
presidential seal upon them shines.
Regarding
the office’s artwork, Mr. Trump, a man with a more-is-more sensibility, chose
what decorators call a gallery hang. A dozen or so gold-framed presidential
portraits crawl up the walls of the Oval Office. Just outside his office
there’s even a copy of his mug shot printed on the front page of The New York
Post.
The most
unusual additions to the office are two gilded mirrors that hang on either side
of the fireplace. This is so quintessentially Mr. Trump that I’m surprised he
didn’t think of it earlier. When standing in front of one, your reflection
joins the pantheon of great leaders above you. It’s just like they say: In
America anyone can grow up to become president.
This design
choice is either incredibly innovative or deeply unsettling, depending on your
state of mind.
In 2017 the
journalist Peter York called Mr. Trump’s aesthetic “dictator chic,” likening
his New York penthouse to Muammar el-Qaddafi’s homes. Others have looked
further back in history for an analogue. Many concluded not only that Mr.
Trump’s style is the stuff of kings and despots but also that it’s French.
On one
level, they aren’t wrong. The decoration Mr. Trump has splattered across the
Oval Office is inspired by European Baroque and Rococo of the 1600s and 1700s,
when power was shown through ornate displays of grotesque abundance. Gold leaf
moldings and large mirrors filled Baroque palace walls from Versailles to the
Peterhof Palace. But in the early 1700s Rococo, an even gaudier style distinct
for its asymmetry, swirling tendrils and gilded seashells, was born. Often
criticized for being purely decorative and intellectually vacuous, it would
become a perfect visual metaphor for the European royal courts of the 18th
century: unserious people draped in gold baubles and ruffled pastels.
But Rococo’s
most enduring trait has been its embrace by the bourgeoisie. By replacing
marble and gold with stucco and gilded bronze, the ornamental splendor once
reserved for gods and kings was now available to merchants and a growing middle
class. Rococo was itself revolutionary, in part because it upset the
established hierarchy by making molded plaster look as good as solid gold. Four
hundred years on, its cheap extravagance is still simultaneously elitist and
democratic. Use it as a commoner and you can feel like a king. Use it as a king
and it might just get you guillotined.
Whatever Mr.
Trump is doing to the walls of the Oval Office is not French; it is deeply
American. Prerevolutionary America was awash in Rococo design. Even one of
America’s most famous revolutionaries, Paul Revere, a silversmith by trade, was
known for his Rococo home goods. After the Revolution, like a good patriot, he
pivoted to neo-Classicism, a heavy and serious style that is a suitable
metaphor for what America wished itself to be: a democracy for the people, not
for a king. When we talk about American design, we tend to prefer our
neo-Classical fantasy to our gilded one. It’s almost as if we are embarrassed
by how much we want to look like kings.
American
Rococo is the stuff of bubbles. It hits when the 1 percent is thriving, when
government leaders are overconfident and new technology is causing great
uncertainty. It celebrates conspicuous consumption and nods to the perceived
stability of the past.
The first
map of the fledgling United States, from 1784, featured a Rococo corsage of
swirling fronds, an American flag and cherubs, all of which would look right at
home stuffed in one of Mr. Trump’s office pediments. And Rococo has remained a
significant part of the American vernacular ever since. It became a favored
embellishment for American guns, stoves, radiators and, when the first cash
registers started emerging in 1879, well, of course, many of them were Rococo
chic, too.
By the time
Mr. Trump was born in June 1946, a Rococo revival was coming for postwar
America. Home design magazines were filled with advertisements for chiffon
curtains that draped like ruffled queens’ sleeves. Modern rooms were full of
18th-century reproduction furniture, bowlegged and ornately embellished.
Silverware sets were edged in swooping florets and seashells. In women’s
fashion, Christian Dior’s “new look” would bring back exaggerated female
silhouettes with small waists and full ruffled skirts, a shape last popular in
the 1800s.
But by 1960
the hard lines of midcentury modernism filled those same magazines. For the
rest of the 20th century Rococo was a bit player, fading in and out of fashion.
Not until the turn of the millennium did Americans go full Rococo all over
again.
In 1997,
after tremendous financial losses, Mr. Trump released the book “The Art of the
Comeback.” The cover featured a portrait of him pouting at the camera in front
of a flinty gold background, and its interior was stuffed with dropped names
and braggadocious renderings of his business exploits. That year his gilded
penthouse was a stand-in for a fictional billionaire’s in the film “The Devil’s
Advocate.” All this was meant to display that famous people do, in fact, like
him, that he was as important as he ever was and that, no matter the financial
losses, the name Trump was still synonymous with ostentatious wealth.
In 1998, The
New York Times summarized the latest trends in fashion. Among them: “ruffles,
fringe and asymmetrical hems,” “Ivanka Trump” and “religion (celebrity
worship).” When Mr. Trump stormed back, Rococo did, too.
As it turns
out, Rococo was the perfect visual accompaniment for a moment that lasted for
the next two decades. Over the next few years, new technology would reshape the
middle class and a tiny handful of Americans would become very, very rich. Some
of those rich Americans became TV stars. There were shows documenting the lives
of millionaires — “The Simple Life” (2003), “Keeping Up With the Kardashians”
(2007) — and shows where Americans tried to become millionaires — “Who Wants to
Be a Millionaire” (1999), “Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?” (2000). And
of course there was a show that was both: “The Apprentice” (2004). On reality
TV we witness baroque story lines and frivolous drama, the collision of high
society and low art and, of course, performative wealth’s obvious facade.
That is,
until the stock market crash of 2008 had a sobering effect, and the backlash to
these millionaires’ royal extravagance was sharp, for a time.
Right before
the 2016 election, Fran Lebowitz called Mr. Trump “a poor person’s idea of a
rich person.” On the campaign trail, he didn’t look or sound like the rest of
the new American billionaires. He wasn’t polished or smooth. His appearance was
shoddy, strange, lacking all polish. And all that gold in his house? Well, yes,
it looked fake. It was Rococo. He was a normal guy self-consciously performing
wealth, something Americans had been doing for the previous 20 years. Not to
mention the past 240.
Last year,
trend forecasters predicted Rococo’s return. There had been hints it was coming
for years. The buzzy shoe in 2021 was a jelly mule reminiscent of the shoe
Marie Antoinette is said to have lost on the way to the guillotine. In 2022,
when the neo-Rococo artist Flora Yukhnovich’s painting sold at auction for over
$3 million, critics trumpeted the return of Rococo art. Rococo was on fashion
runways in 2023 and 2024 and was so prominent on Pinterest that, by 2025,
Target got in on the action, posting a Rococo trend board pointing shoppers to
gilded mirrors and pastel cherubs. The pattern running behind the products was
a light gray damask almost identical to the wallpaper that hangs in Mr. Trump’s
Oval Office.
In November
a country enamored (again) with populist wealth elected (again) a Rococo
president. In Mr. Trump’s America, everything is gold. Our new $175 billion
missile defense shield? It’s a Golden Dome, of course. And from the looks of
the 3-D renderings it will turn the whole country into a shimmering gilded
cheese platter. Want to come to America on the EB-5 immigrant investor visa?
Surely you mean Mr. Trump’s gold card. Unlike the last version, it costs $5
million, but it does allow you to skip paying U.S. taxes on your overseas
income.
Donald Trump
holds a laminated card, emblazoned with his face, his signature, a bald eagle,
the statue of liberty and the words "THE TRUMP CARD," "5M"
and "5,000,000."
So, is this
us?
There is
something very American about a man who wants to be both king and
revolutionary. And there’s something very American about the lust for gold. We
shouldn’t forget that large swaths of this nation were developed and destroyed
because of it. And we shouldn’t forget that our wealth has often been used not
for communal betterment but to enrich the self.
This spring
Mr. Trump invited the Fox News host Laura Ingraham into the Oval Office to show
off his redecorating skills. He pointed to the Rococo décor. “People have tried
to come up with a gold paint that would look like gold, and they have never
been able to do it,” he told her. “That’s why it’s gold.”
But those of
us watching at home know how time always reveals that Rococo is just gilded
plaster. Unfortunately for America, we like it that way.
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