Andrew Wyeth

Though the deaths of Ricardo Montalban and Patrick McGoohan are more film related, it's Andrew Wyeth's death that is haunting me this week. I am not sure what to make of him - I took him for granted in the days before I thought much about art, accepting his fame as a mark of his importance, then, after reading a few critical dismissals, maybe accepting them as the critical line... But when I did start caring about art, and trying to judge works on their merits, neither of those earlier attitudes helped... But then - I don't think I have been able to see much of Wyeth's work. In books, but that doesn't count. (Unlike his father's work, which was made to be put in books, and thus comes through quite nicely on the page - I have seen enough of his work to rank it near the best illustration I know of. Not Mervyn Peake, but the next best thing.) I don't remember seeing a lot of Andrew Wyeth's work up close - but I need to, to judge it. What I know of the controversies just underlines this - the pictures are pretty enough, but pretty pictures area dime a dozen. What happens when you see them for real? My guess is - they work. But I've never proved it. I very much want to - I don't know how I've missed him through the years - maybe his popularity led me away from the work, when it did show... I don't know. I do know - he seems to relate to the strand of art I particularly like - the developments after Homer and Eakins, through Hopper, maybe Scheeler - eventually (I'd say) Rothko, Still, etc. - nature (though also buildings, etc.), increasingly simplified and abstracted into shapes and fields of color - I don't know if that's right or not: it's what Christina's World looks like, quite a few others I have seen, reproduced - many of the images featured on his web site, for instance. But I don't know how much of the effect holds up on close examination. (It holds up very well on examination of Hopper, for instance - in person, the paintings exhibit a strong tension between the picture and the forms - the shapes, colors, the compositions: they are like representational and abstract paintings somehow layered on top of one another. After seeing Hopper - Rothko (say) starts to look like Hopper magnified, like one of his walls or windows viewed from very very close...)

All of which is to say that Wyeth is an artist I want and need to look at, in person. Reading of his death gives that desire a good deal more potency...

And finally - doesn't the composition of Christina's World remind you of this? A painting I have seen many many times,a nd one of the highlights of American art....