We Talked to the Sketch Artists Who Captured the Only Images of Trump’s Impeachment Trial, Where Cameras Were Banned
Today, we’re used to cameras
capturing nearly every banal moment of our day-to-day lives.
They’re in ATMs and smart refrigerators; they even watch us as we
watch TV. But at a generation-defining event of global
importance—the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump—cameras
were all but absent.
We were left to rely on drawing,
the world’s oldest art form, for images of the historic
moment.
With a few rare exceptions,
cameras have been banned from the Senate Chamber for its entire
history. (C-Span is granted the only televisual stream, but its
video cameras are operated by government employees and confined to
a limited viewpoint.) So content-hungry news agencies turned to
illustrators like Art Lien and Bill Hennessy for color.
The Senate press gallery during the
first day of the Trump impeachment trial. © Art Lien. Courtesy of
the artist.
Veterans with several decades
worth of experience between them, Lien and Hennessy have made a
career covering the governments’ closed-door affairs, including
action at the Supreme Court, which also bans cameras, and the
Clinton impeachment trial twenty years ago.
Not much has changed since the
Clinton era, the illustrators note. (Hennessy, commissioned by CBS,
was even assigned the same seat he was given in 1999, right next to
the C-Span cameras.) Bunched with the rest of the press in a small
gallery of seats on the second floor, the artists craned their
necks for snippets of the intricate scene below, which had all the
drama of a stage set. “It’s not a courtroom,” Hennesy tells Artnet,
laughing. “It’s a vast, huge chamber with a lot of people and a lot
of political emotion.”
Senator Richard Burr with a fidget
spinner. © Bill Hennessy. Courtesy of the artist.
Hurriedly sketching vignettes
from the floor, the illustrators provided a fascinating and
strangely aestheticized glimpse into the behind-the-scenes details
of the trial—Senator Richard Burr toying with a fidget spinner, for
instance, or a protester being escorted away while yelling “Schumer
is the Devil!”
They showed James Risch taking a
nap, Bernie Sanders yawning, and the hulking cubbyhole where
everyone is supposed to leave their phones. In one image, Mitt
Romney inexplicably bumbles in with a container of chocolate milk,
before remembering that bottles aren’t allowed in the chamber. (Not
to be deterred from his sweet refreshment, he later returned with
it in a glass.)
The Republican senator from Utah
also provided one of the more poignant moments of the trial,
announcing, on the verge of tears, his intention to vote to
convict. It was a moment both artists were drawn to.
Senator Mitt Romney enters the Senate
chamber before carrying a bottle of chocolate milk, something
forbidden. He promptly left the floor and returned a few minutes
later with his chocolate milk in a glass. © Art Lien. Courtesy of
the artist.
“He started out and then he
paused for a while to regain his composure,” recalls Lien, who was
working for the New York Times. “There weren’t many people
in the press gallery at the time, but suddenly all these reporters
came pouring out to see him speak.”
“The press themselves became
part of the story,” adds Hennesy. “It’s very strict, the rules there. There’s even
a sign along the rail that says ‘no leaning.’ But everyone was
standing and leaning. The image of that was pretty
powerful.”
Lien uses watercolor paint for
his drawings, while Hennesy turns to colored pencil. But with
ramped-up security efforts surrounding the trial, colored
implements weren’t allowed into the chamber, so each illustrator
sketched the Senate scenes in graphite before heading across the
street to the Supreme Court to flesh out their work.
Art Lien’s watercolor palette and
brushes. Courtesy of the artist.
The whole thing was a mad dash, notes Lien. The
two impeachment votes took less than an hour.
“Normally, during a Senate vote,
the senators are mulling around, looking at the tally sheets on the
tables up front. But in this case, all the senators were seated at
their desks and as their names were called, they stood up and
recorded their vote,” remembers the artist. “The whole time, I’m
frantically trying to do a wide shot of the whole chamber with the
galleries of visitors and the senators on the floor.”
Lien says the resulting,
near-panoramic drawing of the vote took around two hours to
finish.
Members of press exiting the gallery
doorway at the end of the impeachment trial. © Bill Hennessy.
Courtesy of the artist.
“Being a courtroom artist is the
last thing I expected to be doing as a career,” says
Hennessy. “I thought the impeachment back in 1999 was the
epitome of that—I remember thinking at the time, ‘Look where it’s
taken me, it’s pretty amazing.’ To find myself there a second time
was pretty incredible.”
See more of Lien and Hennessy’s
sketches from the trial below.
Sketch artist Bill Hennessy capturing
what the cameras don’t. © Art Lien. Courtesy of the artist.
Mitt Romney delivering a pre-verdict
speech with press above. © Bill Hennessy. Courtesy of the
artist.
A Senate demonstrator is led away after
barging into the chamber. © Art Lien. Courtesy of the artist.
A shouting protestor being removed. ©
Bill Hennessy. Courtesy of the artist.
Rep. Adam Schiff reads articles of
impeachment as other managers stand.
© Art Lien. Courtesy of the artist.
Attorney Pat Cipollone at the podium. ©
Bill Hennessy. Courtesy of the artist.
Cubby-holes for senators’ electronic
devices. © Art Lien. Courtesy of the artist.
Further reading
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