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The Wyeths: Three Generations of Artists
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13216 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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10 / 1987 |
2,274 Words |
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James F. Cooper
James F. Cooper is editor of American Arts Quarterly and art
critic for the New York City Tribune. |
The life's work of one solitary artist, who has been described as a loner who wanders by himself in the woods, has come to epitomize, for an increasing number of Americans, a renewed faith in those values that have often been discredited during the last fifty years. It is no accident that this artist is Andrew Wyeth, even though other artists, including Wyeth's father and son, evidence equal technical skills and sensitivity to aesthetic nuances. Three concurrent exhibitions now afford us hindsight in viewing the works of Wyeth and him family: An American Vision: Three generations of Wyeth Arts; Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures; and the permanent display at the Brandywine River Museum.
What separates the work of Andrew Wyeth from much of the contemporary art world is not its realist genre - although many modern art critics would have you believe this - but the artist's unique ability to connect the act of painting with the inner workings of his soul. In a time of doubt, Andrew Wyeth has remained firmly anchored to those truths he has been able to discover within himself.
If in viewing these varied collections, we judge Wyeth as having failed to match the achievements of Rembrandt or Durer, then we must share in the fault, because society itself has abandoned the standards and ideals that have provided the foundation for all great art of the past. That Andrew Wyeth and others persevered in the cultural vacuum of the last fifty years is in itself an achievement.
An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art, which first appeared in the Soviet Union and traveled to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. prior to its
... (1991 of 13653 Characters)
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