From the New York Times:
Andrew Wyeth, one of the most popular and also most lambasted artists in the history of American art, a reclusive linchpin in a colorful family dynasty of artists whose precise realist views of hardscrabble rural life became icons of national culture and sparked endless debates about the nature of modern art, died Friday at his home in Chadds Ford. He was 91.
....
Because of his popularity, a bad sign to many art world insiders, Wyeth came to represent middle-class values and ideals that modernism claimed to reject, so that arguments about his work extended beyond painting to societal splits along class, geographical and educational lines. One art historian, in response to a 1977 survey in Art News magazine about the most underrated and overrated artists of the century, nominated Wyeth for both categories.
He was popular, therefore he could not possibly be a good painter?
As John Updike said, “In the heyday of Abstract Expressionism, the scorn was simple gallery politics; but resistance to Wyeth remains curiously stiff in an art world that has no trouble making room for Photorealists like Richard Estes and Philip Pearlstein and graduates of commercial art like Wayne Thibauld, Andy Warhol, and for that matter, Edward Hopper.”
I'm not ashamed to say that I liked his paintings, especially "Christina", pictured above.
Wyeth had seen Christina Olson, crippled from the waist down, dragging herself across a Maine field, “like a crab on a New England shore,” he recalled. To him she was a model of dignity who refused to use a wheelchair and preferred to live in squalor rather than be beholden to anyone. It was dignity of a particularly dour, hardened, misanthropic sort, to which Wyeth throughout his career seemed to gravitate.
Misanthropic? Not at all. Wyeth painted Christina with dignity. How is that misanthropic?
I liked the much reviled Helga paintings, too. The writer of this piece calls them "soft core renditions". What are the chances that he is not an admirer Wyeth's work? I can think of thousands of nude paintings over the centuries, which are now called great art, but seem hard core compared to the Helga paintings.
I admit that I am not an expert, neither an artist nor an art critic, but I have long loved the art of Andrew Wyeth. My husband and I lived in South Carolina for a few years, and they had a number of his paintings at the small art museum in Greenville. Many times I went there to stand and look in awe at masterpieces in water color.
ReplyDeleteBeryl, I'm surely not an expert, but that doesn't stop me from giving my opinion. I don't think we should let ourselves be bullied by the "experts".
ReplyDeleteI don't get the reference to misanthropy at all. Methinks it's in the eye of the beholder.
There was a strong trend in both the art and "serious" music worlds ("serious" music meaning those composers who based themselves on the classical orchestral/instrumental/operatic tradition, as opposed to jazz, R&B, and most other forms of music, which never wanted to be anything other than popular) to view popular favor as a negative, and to think that any piece which the general population liked was lacking in "art". They purposely distanced themselves from pop culture; it was snobbery pure and simple. (I'm more familiar with music and art, so it may not have been so strong in the plastic acts like painting and sculpture.)
ReplyDeleteSo an artist like Wyeth who didn't go the trendy route and remained admired by regular people was a sort of direct slap in the face to the Lords of Modern Art.
But beyond that, I think the best person to speak on the subject is Counterlight, but he's away on his travails..
BTW, I think the misanthropy was something Wyeth attributed to Christina, and referred to her pride in herself and her determination to stay independent even if meant to drag herself on her arms where other people walked and to live in extreme poverty--misanthropy in not wanting other people's help, as opposed to dislike of the rest of humanity.
BTW, I think the misanthropy was something Wyeth attributed to Christina,
ReplyDeleteKishnevi, you could be right, but I don't read it that way.
It was dignity of a particularly dour, hardened, misanthropic sort, to which Wyeth throughout his career seemed to gravitate.
I think that's the writer's opinion.
We'll ask Counterlight what he thinks of Wyeth when he gets back.
I visited Chadd's Ford a few years back and it was a life-changing experience in terms of art. What incredible work the whole Wyeth family did -- and believe me, prints don't do them justice.
ReplyDeleteI think the "misanthropic" in the critical comment was intended as a description not of Wyeth but of Christina -- that kind of New England, "Dammit I don't need anybody's help!" I think the critic is suggesting that Wyeth found such a hardness to be paradoxically attractive.
All the comments on art and music snobbery are spot on...
All right. Two to one against my interpretation of what the writer meant.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's right to label traditional New Englanders as misanthropic. Cherishing self-reliance isn't misanthropy. Score it 2-2 that the NYT review was awkward.
ReplyDeleteJoe, I could tell from the get-go that the author of the article didn't care much for Wyeth's work. I think we're right. I'd say "snide" rather than "awkward", but you're kinder than I.
ReplyDeleteI think the caricature of the old Down Easter who said, "You cahn't get theyah from heyah" is part of the image of New England in many peoples minds... and I say that with one side of my family from Boston! I agree that "misanthropic" is probably too strong a word for the kind of granite taciturnity that many people (wrongly) think typifies New England.
ReplyDeleteI think the phrasing in the review is snide and infelicitous, but that the critic was getting on to something about Wyeth's work that separates it from mere illustration (a common critique). And that was precisely his attraction to portraying things that are beautiful but not pretty. I think to some extent he shares a fellow-feeling with Diane Arbus, though not going as far as she did. In any case, he was a great artist, to my mind, and many of his critics will be long forgotten while his works are still admired and enjoyed.
Tobias, I thought of Diane Arbus, too, and of critiques of her work for her attraction to "freaks". I see that in Wyeth's work, and, like you, as what defines his art against the Norman Rockwell school of illustration.
ReplyDelete