Comments on: Bon Voyage: Andrew Wyeth and George W. Bush

By: John P. Garry III

John P. Garry III — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:27:40 +0000

Liberals hated Edward Hopper? Which liberals?

Hopper has been sacrosanct in American art for as long as I can remember. The same arts world you excoriate has produced many retrospectives and publications on Hopper.

Your attempt to to justify Hopper by turning him into a Sarah Palin-style nostalgic nationalist are not convincing. Hopper loved theater and painted the interiors of theaters several times. He studied in France (horrors!). He painted strippers (goodness!).

Hopper painted the contemporary, modern world as he saw it. His people are often introspective, but that is because they are often alone, not because they were more profound and soulful than we are. The America Hopper painted is not so different from the America of today.

Hopper loved vast spaces (the ocean, the American Southwest) but he also saw that people sharing tight spaces (in diners, offices, and bedrooms) could still be miles apart. This is an aspect of modern, urban life that hasn’t changed.

The suggestion that Hopper painted a better America is highly dubious (that would be the province of Grant Wood and Norman Rockwell). To try to make Hopper a tribune of reactionary nostalgia and loathing of the present is misguided.

If you want to whip liberals and arts professionals you’ll have to find a tool other than the universally beloved Hopper.

As for the “elitist liberal left” taking over the art world, the top modern gallerist, Gagosian, is, I believe, a Republican (God bless him).

Andy Warhol was a regular church-goer and adored the Reagans (albeit, for their celebrity rather than their politics).

Outwardly nationalistic, anti-modern artists (The Regionalists) such as Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton can still be seen on museum walls (Shh! Don’t tell the liberals!)

As for modern galleries being less well attended, well, try going to MOMA on a Sunday afternoon…,or visit the new Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago, and see how empty the Old Master galleries are by comparison (regretably)

Your association of modern art and political liberalism/leftism is ill-informed and cliched (and seemingly borrowed whole from Tom Wolfe)

Conservatives played a strong role in literary modernism, while revolutionary communists were famed for their love of classical art.

Stalin replaced the burgeoning modernism in Russian art with the bland realism of Socialist Realism. There is a whole school of Marxist criticism which favors realism over naturalism and abstraction.

The early patrons of modernism were distinguished by social class, not political leaning. They were from the educated middle classes rather than the hereditary aristocracy and the clergy (the patrons of classical art).

John P. Garry
Los Angeles

By: christmasghost

christmasghost — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:12:04 +0000

“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.

By: Roger W. Gardner

Roger W. Gardner — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:16:05 +0000

Perfectly said, “I Remember”. Thank you.
rg

By: iremember

iremember — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 19:06:39 +0000

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.

By: Roger W. Gardner

Roger W. Gardner — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 15:50:28 +0000

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).

By: Roger W. Gardner

Roger W. Gardner — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 05:24:21 +0000

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.

By: Jack Troy

Jack Troy — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 04:31:44 +0000

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.

By: Roger W. Gardner

Roger W. Gardner — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 04:00:24 +0000

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.

By: Dan Collins

Dan Collins — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 03:32:33 +0000

I kind of like Kline.

But the Franklin Friggin’ Mint won’t release any of his stuff on plates.

By: Jenn

Jenn — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:58:35 +0000

Excellent post.