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How Andrew Wyeth manipulated me
Dan Coren
The big con: How Andrew Wyeth (and his wife) manipulated me (and my wife)
DAN COREN
Almost three months after Anne R. Fabbri eviscerated the recent Andrew Wyeth exhibition at the Museum of Art (click here), my wife and I finally attended the show, a few weeks before it closed on July 16th. We probably never would have gone were it not for my wife’s urging. I had no strong feelings one way or the other about Wyeth, but she did. Not that she’s a great Wyeth admirer, but she has always lived in or near Philadelphia; in the mid-1960s, 20 years or so before we met, she spent many hours photographing the same landscape that Wyeth paints, and in some ways her personal history and background matches Wyeth’s. So there we were, cocooned by headsets, starting out on what turned out to be a very unsettling tour of Wyeth’s work.
For the next hour or two, I was completely convinced by the gentle, knowledgeable voice on the audio tour: Wyeth’s paintings seemed to resonate with loss and emptiness; they felt like Norman Rockwell paintings from which all the people had mysteriously vanished, leaving in their place an atmosphere of enigmatic significance and foreboding. My wife had tears in her eyes almost immediately; it took me a bit longer. By the time we sat down together in a room filled with portraits near the end of the exhibit– a nice touch, as if the missing population was finally given a chance to take a bow– we were both in quite a state.
During this time, I found myself growing angrier and angrier at Ms. Fabbri’s closing swipe: “If you like Hallmark cards and soap operas and have never questioned American hegemony, this is your show.” While I admit to being at a loss to write with any sophistication or depth of knowledge about the visual arts, I surely don’t like being told that my emotional reaction stamps me as a sentimental, passive ignoramus. I reminded my wife of what Ms. Fabbri had written; she said something very rude about Ms. Fabbri.
Yet in fact, over the next several days, the whole experience unraveled for both of us.
A few days later, we visited our close friends, Leslie and David, on Martha’s Vineyard. Leslie Baker is, simply put, a wonderful painter. When my wife and I first met in 1983, she already owned some of Leslie’s works. Leslie was then painting virtuosically precise and delicate watercolor still lifes. Today, she is working in oils, painting landscapes that … well, follow this link and see for yourself. As Leslie put it to me, then she was painting precisely what she saw; today, she’s trying to paint what she feels about what she sees.
I love hearing Leslie talk about her work; she has a deep theoretical bent, and when she discusses color theory, it’s as if she’s talking about her version of the Circle of Fifths, that great almost mystical construct that all musicians must internalize if they are to feel at home with classical harmony.
‘I even like Norman Rockwell better’
Almost as soon as we were off the ferry, we told Leslie about our Wyeth experience— eager, I think, not just for her opinion, but also for her blessing of our emotional response. No such luck. For about ten seconds, Leslie tried to be circumspect, but she just couldn’t bring it off. She granted Wyeth’s talents as a draughtsman, but she damned Wyeth’s work as if she had collaborated with Anne Fabbri (Leslie has never heard of her)— condemning Wyeth’s drab palette, his apparently willful ignorance of any artistic developments in the 20th Century and indeed of the modern world in general, his grim stylistic monotony, etc. etc., finally concluding with the ultimate insult: “I even like Norman Rockwell better.”
After our visit, Leslie sent us “Wyeth’s World,” an article by Deidre Stein Greben, from the October 2005 issue of ARTnews, written as an introduction to the opening of this same Wyeth exhibit in Atlanta. Ms. Greben surveys the opinions of many art critics and curators in the hope of resolving the question of Wyeth’s worth or lack of it. In reading her article, I was struck by the vehemence of Wyeth’s detractors (one critic describes Wyeth’s palette as “mud and baby poop”) and by the lack of passion of his defenders; the best they can muster is a sentence like, “There is an interesting sense of dislocation in Wyeth’s work.” One sentence in particular— a quote from Robert Storr of New York University— brought into focus something that had been bothering me even while I was still viewing the show: “ ‘No one has manipulated withdrawal from the world more successfully’.” Greben adds that Wyeth “has profited enormously from the reproductions of his images, a business largely controlled by his wife, Betsy.”
If it sounds like Hallmark Cards….
When I read that, I finally acknowledged to myself the uneasiness I had felt at the Art Museum when I read the text accompanying a portrait of Betsy Wyeth and learned that, in addition to managing all her husband’s business affairs, Betsy makes up the titles for his works. Really? Why in the world would he let her do that? Can you imagine Bob Dylan, for example, letting somebody else title his songs? And, come to think of it, the titles— “Soaring,” “Gone to Sea,” “First Snow” – are indeed pretty kitschy, suitable for— point well taken, Ms. Fabbri! -- Hallmark greeting cards.
In the end, both my wife and I agreed, somewhat sheepishly, that perhaps we had allowed ourselves to be conned. My wife especially, who herself genuinely loves solitude and understands reclusiveness, is convinced that Wyeth the Withdrawn is a fraud. “Bullshit” is, I believe, the technical term she used. And, in retrospect, many other aspects of the show – its hokey title (“Memory and Magic”), even the musical excerpts accompanying the audio tour lectures (see my addendum below) – now seem manipulative to me.
I’m fairly sure that if I hadn’t accepted the offer of the audio tour, this article never would have been written. Without coaching, without the explanations of Wyeth’s hidden agendas– agendas that, as my wife said, could never be discovered from the paintings themselves-- I think my opinion of him would have remained basically unchanged: Oh, him— he’s the guy who painted Christina’s World, the guy who keeps on painting those precise and vaguely nostalgic empty landscapes.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t have been stimulated to examine what I really value in the visual arts. I tried to think of a painting– any painting– that I regard as an iconic personal aesthetic experience in the same way I regard countless pieces of music and many literary works. This was a difficult exercise— I’m apparently wired for sound and language, not for images. One painting, though, has stayed in my mind ever since I saw it the first time at the Barnes Foundation: Monet’s Camille au Métiér, of the artist’s wife doing embroidery work.
A Google images search yields many hits on this painting, but none gives even the faintest hint of the work’s beauty as it appeared at the Barnes. As I recall (and I may well be romanticizing what I actually saw), the work was hung at a small distance in a darkly lit gallery, so that the halo of light surrounding Madame Monet seemed to illuminate the whole room. Even more than the sheer voluptuousness of Monet’s palette, what I remember most about the painting is how it captures Camille’s rapt concentration on her work; you can practically feel her fingers delicately moving needles through the rich fabric. It’s a technical marvel and at the same time one of the most intimate, love-filled works of art I’ve ever seen. If it were in my home, I’m sure I’d never tire of it.
Technical virtuosity in the service of everyday human activity and intimacy. Sounds like a Mozart opera to me. I don’t think I’ll remember Wyeth in the same way.
* * *
Footnote to the above:
The musical excerpts that accompanied the spoken material on the audio tour were taken from some of the most revered and esoteric works in the classical chamber music repertory— the slow movement of Beethoven's "Archduke" Trio; the opening of the Schubert Op. 99 Piano Trio; the Brahms Clarinet sonatas, etc. I found it something of a desecration to have these works talked over, to have them treated essentially as atmospheric wallpaper.
I shared these thoughts with Marla K. Shoemaker, the Senior Curator of Education, who was gracious and cooperative. The music was chosen, she said, because Wyeth likes classical music. She informed me that an outfit named Antenna Audio was responsible, and that Antenna and Acoustiguide are the two major companies producing audio tours for museums.
Perhaps Wyeth loves classical music. Perhaps these are even his favorite pieces. But how is one supposed to know that? And why does that make them appropriate for this particular purpose? In fact, why use music at all?♦
To read a response, click here.
DAN COREN
Almost three months after Anne R. Fabbri eviscerated the recent Andrew Wyeth exhibition at the Museum of Art (click here), my wife and I finally attended the show, a few weeks before it closed on July 16th. We probably never would have gone were it not for my wife’s urging. I had no strong feelings one way or the other about Wyeth, but she did. Not that she’s a great Wyeth admirer, but she has always lived in or near Philadelphia; in the mid-1960s, 20 years or so before we met, she spent many hours photographing the same landscape that Wyeth paints, and in some ways her personal history and background matches Wyeth’s. So there we were, cocooned by headsets, starting out on what turned out to be a very unsettling tour of Wyeth’s work.
For the next hour or two, I was completely convinced by the gentle, knowledgeable voice on the audio tour: Wyeth’s paintings seemed to resonate with loss and emptiness; they felt like Norman Rockwell paintings from which all the people had mysteriously vanished, leaving in their place an atmosphere of enigmatic significance and foreboding. My wife had tears in her eyes almost immediately; it took me a bit longer. By the time we sat down together in a room filled with portraits near the end of the exhibit– a nice touch, as if the missing population was finally given a chance to take a bow– we were both in quite a state.
During this time, I found myself growing angrier and angrier at Ms. Fabbri’s closing swipe: “If you like Hallmark cards and soap operas and have never questioned American hegemony, this is your show.” While I admit to being at a loss to write with any sophistication or depth of knowledge about the visual arts, I surely don’t like being told that my emotional reaction stamps me as a sentimental, passive ignoramus. I reminded my wife of what Ms. Fabbri had written; she said something very rude about Ms. Fabbri.
Yet in fact, over the next several days, the whole experience unraveled for both of us.
A few days later, we visited our close friends, Leslie and David, on Martha’s Vineyard. Leslie Baker is, simply put, a wonderful painter. When my wife and I first met in 1983, she already owned some of Leslie’s works. Leslie was then painting virtuosically precise and delicate watercolor still lifes. Today, she is working in oils, painting landscapes that … well, follow this link and see for yourself. As Leslie put it to me, then she was painting precisely what she saw; today, she’s trying to paint what she feels about what she sees.
I love hearing Leslie talk about her work; she has a deep theoretical bent, and when she discusses color theory, it’s as if she’s talking about her version of the Circle of Fifths, that great almost mystical construct that all musicians must internalize if they are to feel at home with classical harmony.
‘I even like Norman Rockwell better’
Almost as soon as we were off the ferry, we told Leslie about our Wyeth experience— eager, I think, not just for her opinion, but also for her blessing of our emotional response. No such luck. For about ten seconds, Leslie tried to be circumspect, but she just couldn’t bring it off. She granted Wyeth’s talents as a draughtsman, but she damned Wyeth’s work as if she had collaborated with Anne Fabbri (Leslie has never heard of her)— condemning Wyeth’s drab palette, his apparently willful ignorance of any artistic developments in the 20th Century and indeed of the modern world in general, his grim stylistic monotony, etc. etc., finally concluding with the ultimate insult: “I even like Norman Rockwell better.”
After our visit, Leslie sent us “Wyeth’s World,” an article by Deidre Stein Greben, from the October 2005 issue of ARTnews, written as an introduction to the opening of this same Wyeth exhibit in Atlanta. Ms. Greben surveys the opinions of many art critics and curators in the hope of resolving the question of Wyeth’s worth or lack of it. In reading her article, I was struck by the vehemence of Wyeth’s detractors (one critic describes Wyeth’s palette as “mud and baby poop”) and by the lack of passion of his defenders; the best they can muster is a sentence like, “There is an interesting sense of dislocation in Wyeth’s work.” One sentence in particular— a quote from Robert Storr of New York University— brought into focus something that had been bothering me even while I was still viewing the show: “ ‘No one has manipulated withdrawal from the world more successfully’.” Greben adds that Wyeth “has profited enormously from the reproductions of his images, a business largely controlled by his wife, Betsy.”
If it sounds like Hallmark Cards….
When I read that, I finally acknowledged to myself the uneasiness I had felt at the Art Museum when I read the text accompanying a portrait of Betsy Wyeth and learned that, in addition to managing all her husband’s business affairs, Betsy makes up the titles for his works. Really? Why in the world would he let her do that? Can you imagine Bob Dylan, for example, letting somebody else title his songs? And, come to think of it, the titles— “Soaring,” “Gone to Sea,” “First Snow” – are indeed pretty kitschy, suitable for— point well taken, Ms. Fabbri! -- Hallmark greeting cards.
In the end, both my wife and I agreed, somewhat sheepishly, that perhaps we had allowed ourselves to be conned. My wife especially, who herself genuinely loves solitude and understands reclusiveness, is convinced that Wyeth the Withdrawn is a fraud. “Bullshit” is, I believe, the technical term she used. And, in retrospect, many other aspects of the show – its hokey title (“Memory and Magic”), even the musical excerpts accompanying the audio tour lectures (see my addendum below) – now seem manipulative to me.
I’m fairly sure that if I hadn’t accepted the offer of the audio tour, this article never would have been written. Without coaching, without the explanations of Wyeth’s hidden agendas– agendas that, as my wife said, could never be discovered from the paintings themselves-- I think my opinion of him would have remained basically unchanged: Oh, him— he’s the guy who painted Christina’s World, the guy who keeps on painting those precise and vaguely nostalgic empty landscapes.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t have been stimulated to examine what I really value in the visual arts. I tried to think of a painting– any painting– that I regard as an iconic personal aesthetic experience in the same way I regard countless pieces of music and many literary works. This was a difficult exercise— I’m apparently wired for sound and language, not for images. One painting, though, has stayed in my mind ever since I saw it the first time at the Barnes Foundation: Monet’s Camille au Métiér, of the artist’s wife doing embroidery work.
A Google images search yields many hits on this painting, but none gives even the faintest hint of the work’s beauty as it appeared at the Barnes. As I recall (and I may well be romanticizing what I actually saw), the work was hung at a small distance in a darkly lit gallery, so that the halo of light surrounding Madame Monet seemed to illuminate the whole room. Even more than the sheer voluptuousness of Monet’s palette, what I remember most about the painting is how it captures Camille’s rapt concentration on her work; you can practically feel her fingers delicately moving needles through the rich fabric. It’s a technical marvel and at the same time one of the most intimate, love-filled works of art I’ve ever seen. If it were in my home, I’m sure I’d never tire of it.
Technical virtuosity in the service of everyday human activity and intimacy. Sounds like a Mozart opera to me. I don’t think I’ll remember Wyeth in the same way.
* * *
Footnote to the above:
The musical excerpts that accompanied the spoken material on the audio tour were taken from some of the most revered and esoteric works in the classical chamber music repertory— the slow movement of Beethoven's "Archduke" Trio; the opening of the Schubert Op. 99 Piano Trio; the Brahms Clarinet sonatas, etc. I found it something of a desecration to have these works talked over, to have them treated essentially as atmospheric wallpaper.
I shared these thoughts with Marla K. Shoemaker, the Senior Curator of Education, who was gracious and cooperative. The music was chosen, she said, because Wyeth likes classical music. She informed me that an outfit named Antenna Audio was responsible, and that Antenna and Acoustiguide are the two major companies producing audio tours for museums.
Perhaps Wyeth loves classical music. Perhaps these are even his favorite pieces. But how is one supposed to know that? And why does that make them appropriate for this particular purpose? In fact, why use music at all?♦
To read a response, click here.
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