Donald Trump has unveiled a new portrait of himself and it’s the most autocratic yet. A painted version of his fist-pumping stance after being shot in July 2024 now greets visitors in the entrance hall of the White House. This “Fight, fight, fight!” canvas is true strongman art.

It is just the latest in a series of artistic moves by Trump that look disturbingly tyrannical. When he complained that a portrait of himself in the Colorado State Capitol building was “purposefully distorted” it was taken down as quickly as if the US were Stalin’s Soviet Union. And he has ordered JD Vance to purge the Smithsonian museums of “improper ideology”. But how seriously should any of this be taken? Is it an urgent threat to democracy and culture or mere muscle-flexing?

A show currently in Paris offers a troubling historical perspective on Trump’s art antics. “Degenerate” Art: The Trial of Modern Art Under Nazism, at the Musée Picasso, takes you back to the age of the dictators when totalitarian regimes sought to control art absolutely and use it to their own ends. I wasn’t keen to plunge into Nazi cultural history after the sunny pleasures of David Hockney’s epic retrospective, but I was politely dragged along. The chill was instant.