Category Archives: art

General arts and culture posts

American Populists: Andrew Wyeth and Norman Rockwell

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Andrew Wyeth, Benny’s Scarecrow

The painter Andrew Wyeth died last Friday. In a way, he was a most unpopular populist. As the New York Times describes here, his main value to most art historians was that he provided an alternative to Modernism in the 1940s and 50s. Not quite high praise. The American public, the part that didn’t go in for Modernism, tended to be much fonder of Wyeth’s realistic images.

His form of realism seems to be what endears him to the common man, placing him in the class of Americana with Norman Rockwell. A spiritual opposite of Norman Rockwell, however, his negativity and earthiness depict another side of America’s identity. His subject matter is rural and humble; his style accessible, that is to say, it looks like real objects. His excellently composed scenes have an almost magical realism, but ultimately, I find them a little dull.

Andrew Wyeth, Christina’s Field

His most famous painting, above, is of a woman in his community who was crippled and pulled herself through fields rather than use a wheelchair. Wyeth admired her independence and determination. In this and much of his work, he overlays the American landscape with foreboding atmosphere and Puritanical ethos. Whereas Wyeth seems like the last of the Puritans, Rockwell’s work shows a New American optimism.

Norman Rockwell, The Roadblock

Is it fair to say Wyeth represents an older, Puritan ethos and Rockwell represents the exuberant America coming out of WWII?

Who is more American?

Reflections of Mylar

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Here we have me, Iphone photo taker extraordinaire, taking photo of Josephine Meckseper’s photograph on view at MoMA, with reflection of other huge print on facing wall.

Call me conceited, but I think it does more justice to the size and quality of her work than the MoMA’s exhibition images. She prints on mylar, which gives a viewer/viewee quality in its reflections of dull images of consumerism from a typical 1970s German catalog. Her work seems a little dated to me, both in the images she choose (quite purposefully dated on that account) and in the themes of consumerism, societal construct, and advertising effects on how we view ourselves.

MoMA is showcasing her work along with another photographers as noteworthy of 2008. Ah how quickly we pick favorites from the old year and move in. And I’m not over 2007 yet.

“Beauty and the Best” and a Boyfriend

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“Artists should be separated from people who do creative things” was my boyfriend’s response to my description of Theodore Dalrymple’s article in The New English Review, mentioned previously here.

By that, he meant that saying a chef was an artiste was hyperbolic, only meaning he cooked very well. He also meant that more conceptual and non-traditional works of contemporary art, such as rings of circles in duct tape or performances where a person sits on a box for days or even Pippilotti Rist’s video and sound installation in the atrium at MoMA, are cool, are visual, and are creative but that they are not art.

Dalrymple’s trenchant article has stayed in my mind, but all my conclusions from it seem to be drawing lines in the sand, much as my boyfriend’s statement does. “This is Art; this is not.” As if there were a right and wrong, and a good and bad when it comes to art.

But in fact, isn’t there? Art requires a set of aesthetic values to be judged by, if we are to make judgments at all. Life and art, or at least my life and art, are more than a series of perceptions. They have meaning to me, and they do because I assign to all things value. This is no formal declaration of organizing principles either for myself or of culture in general. But as my life has meaning, and art has meaning to me, and I think some organizing principle guides my perceptions of art.

Dalrymple’s article feels true to my experiences. He considers popular contemporary art to be shallow and created by egoists who are too afraid to create something beautiful, not to mention lacking the technical means and knowledge of an artistic heritage to do so. Think of Jeff Koons, who he mentions, or Damian Hirst or Murakami. To strive for beauty seems too earnest, almost gauche today.

So perhaps my boyfriend and Dalrymple are saying similar things. One feels it is not art, the other that it is bad art. Perhaps I agree. My amusement and interest with much of contemporary art is just that; and those feelings are different than a reaction to something beautiful. People who look can find beauty and an expression of the human condition in a falling leaf or the texture of a wall. A beautiful work of art makes those qualities apparent to those who weren’t looking.