Bon Voyage: Andrew Wyeth and George W. Bush
Posted on January 16, 2009
Christina’s World
Andrew Wyeth 1964
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A note from Radarsite: Take note: A part of America has just passed away. A great artist of powerful yet understated and subtle vision died today. A truly American artist, a beloved painter whose poignant works have successfully bridged the gap between expert and layman and spoken to us all and moved us all. Like his equally famous American contemporary, Edward Hopper, he is known as a master of loneliness, yet there is so much more to their work than this. They speak to us of a different America, a quiet, introspective, more profound and soulful America, an America far removed from the glamor and glitz with which we are (so mistakenly, I believe) universally associated.
Bon voyage, Andrew, may you rest in peace. America will miss you. – rg
A postscript: This is in reply to Findalis’ interesting reference to the controversies surrounding Wyeth (and others) work in the 80s.
As many of you may already know, my background is in art — I attended the New York Art Students League and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Wyeth’s alma mater). There are some interesting analogies between the liberals’ hatred of artists like Hopper and Wyeth, and the liberals hatred of Reagan and G. W. Bush. That’s why I mentioned that Wyeth had ‘bridged the gap between the experts and the layman’. Both the working artists and the interested laymen loved and appreciated Wyeth’s work. But those in between, those pseudo-intellectuals soon assumed the pose of disdain for what they considered to be commonplace realism. They had moved beyond that inferior art form long ago. Realism — i.e., painting things as they appeared to the eye — was out and obscurantism was in. Beginning in the late sixties with pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and pure abstract expressionists like Kline and Pollack and others, and culminating in the furious collecting mania of the 80s, the New York art world was effectively taken over by the elitist liberal left. Academic (traditional or figurative) art — was demoted and looked down upon as second rate and intellectually inferior to abstract or non-objective art, or its various New Age offshoots, such as op art, anti-art, etc. In other words, the pseudo-intellectuals took over and the layman was almost completely — and, I think, quite purposely — alienated, effectively left out in the cold. “Artists” vied with one another to see who could be more avant-garde, who could be more outrageous. A painter was deemed important only if those critics who were deemed important said that they were important. The average person had no say in this matter whatsoever. To mouth the abstruse — and often meaningless — jargon of the art critics, the more obscure the better, (such as, ‘plastic orchestration’, metaphysical harmony’, etc.) became a sign of one’s superior intellect — and just another way of separating oneself from the unlettered herd.
In the late 1950s, I had a one-man show of my work at a prestigious gallery in Rittenhouse Square, in Philadelphia (It was, in fact, so prestigious that I wasn’t allowed in to view my own work until I had borrowed a tie from a friend). I remember sitting on a bench in the center of this rather elegant display area, surrounded by my work on the walls, and listening to the conversations of the visitors as they circled the room, commenting on my paintings and drawings. It was so phony, so pretentious, that I almost started to laugh at them. I was the artist. It was my work, and I think I understood it and what it was intended to convey, but these Sunday connoisseurs were attributing meanings and motives to my paintings and drawings that I neither comprehended nor intended.
Well now, here we go again, folks. Once again the liberal elitists have won out. They hated GWB for some of the same reasons they hated Andrew Wyeth, and now once again they will be telling us what is supposed to be important and what is not.
God help us all. – rg
For more on Andrew Wyeth click here
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9 Responses to “Bon Voyage: Andrew Wyeth and George W. Bush”
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Excellent post.
I kind of like Kline.
But the Franklin Friggin’ Mint won’t release any of his stuff on plates.
Thank you Jenn.
And to Dan — I too like Franz Kline. And Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollack. The issue isn’t whether or not these particular artists are talented – they most certainly are. The problem is that they opened the door to innumerable aesthetic excesses and artistic absurdities — such as the ‘Jesus in Urine’. The only criteria that mattered anymore was how different and novel and outlandish an artist could be. There developed a kind of artistic nihilism, which was eagerly embraced by the elitist left. Trading on the art market became second only to trading on the stock market. The value of a work was — as I pointed out earlier — based upon the unchallenged pronouncements of dubious art critics and intellectuals. Like the real estate market in our own era, the runaway art market of the 80s eventually spun out of control.
To misinterpret my postscript as an attack on modern art is to miss the point. I am only attacking the corresponding complete and utter dismissal of the value of all figurative painting — the Rembrandts, the Valesquez, the Turners, and also the Hoppers and the Wyeths.
Happily, there has been some recent backlash against this aesthetic revolution and great academic painting has once again been given the credit it most certainly warrants.
This whole subject has more to do with the vagaries of the marketplace and fashion than with the world of art. Thankfully, there are those artists who, unconcerned with the fashionable, march to the beat of their own drummer. I would certainly put Hopper and Wyeth in this category. But there is also room in this category for a Matisse or a Magritte.
It is surprising to read in “Bon Voyage: Andrew Wyeth and George W. Bush,” that the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts was Andrew Wyeth’s “alma mater.” I was always under the impression that AW’s only teacher was his father, NC Wyeth. AW’s name does not appear among any of the Academy’s alumni lists accessible online.
What we find meaningful in art (or food, landscapes, clothing, or music) will always be a matter of personal choice; it needn’t be justified with verbal flying buttresses. When a work of art “speaks to us,” it may do so in a language that doesn’t lend itself to translation, but it gets our attention, and that’s all that matters.
To Jack Troy — Perhaps my memory is slipping. I always remembered AW as going to the Academy. If I was mistaken on that, I apologize. As for the rest, I agree with most of what you say — except perhaps that getting our attention is all that matters: an automobile accident can get our attention. The Jesus in Urine most certainly got our attention. That aside, I think we agree. Although I must say you have a rather pompous way of putting things.
An interesting footnote: In going back over the career of AW to see if he did indeed attend the PAFA (which he evidently did not)I discovered that one of his first shows was at the very same gallery I mentioned in my article (The Philadelphia Art Alliance in Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia).
The art critics of the twentieth century had a vested interest in modern art. Unfortunately modern art is shallow and decorative. Have you ever noticed how few people visit the modern art section of our galleries. To ask the viewer to see nothing in your art is asking too much. This is the type of thing that should be reserved for building decorations and mouldings for furniture. True art is not mere imitation. These so-called critics of taste in many instances are not great artists themselves and wouldn’t know how to paint a great picture if their life depended on it. Great art is a synthesis of life. A coordination of great design, which is all that modern has and nothing else, a feeling for the subject, great skill, and yes a sense of form. Abstract modern art has only the design. Great realist art begins with design and then adds the other elements. Great realistic art is never an imitation of the subject like a camera would give. Critics seem to not understand this. Wake up art world. Andrew Wyeth and other great realistic artists will over time become the remembered artists of the last century. Fashion is fickle, but great art is timeless. Mere daubs of color without meaning are meaningless. They are fine for decoration but little else.
Perfectly said, “I Remember”. Thank you.
rg
“It was so phony, so pretentious, that I almost started to laugh at them. I was the artist. It was my work, and I think I understood it and what it was intended to convey, but these Sunday connoisseurs were attributing meanings and motives to my paintings and drawings that I neither comprehended nor intended.”
roger….this really made me laugh. as an artist i can attest to the truth of your experience over and over again.i painted a large 6×8 foot abstract painting that i sold to an exec. from a large corporation. he said over and over again how i “must have been reading his mind because he could see his “life” in MY work.”
it was all i could do to keep from dying laughing….but i just nodded and watched as the zeros added up on the check.
pompous fool that he was….as long as the check clears they can delude themselves all they want to. but it sure has ruined the art world for artists.
and kids, andy warhol was NO ARTIST but a creepy little copycat…period.
wyeth was a true artist….what a vast loss for everyone.