Andrew Wyeth 1917-2009
Andrew Wyeth was one of the last great American artists-his work was often confusing, but you could look at it and see that it was meant to be something. This was a rare thing in art after Picasso took the world by storm and whole generations of artists decided that random dots and lines and swirls could be considered great art.
There are still great artists, they are just not making the kind of art that I tend to like. N.C. Wyeth, Andrews father, now that was great art. Of course, N.C Wyeth was not considered a real artist, like Maxfield Parrish he was just an illustrator. Which is kind of like saying daVinci was just a draftsman.
Andrew Wyeth’s son James Wyeth is a pretty good artist as well. My favorite of his images is a self portrait with a pumpkin on his head. There’s something very appealing about that kind of silliness to me.
The last news I heard about Andrew Wyeth was when his book about his Helga paintings came out a few years back. These were over two hundred paintings of a remarkably average look woman. Like many of Rodin’s women, Helga is not an idealized perfect woman, she is a real woman. These paintings have a special kind of magic all their own.
Part of the problem with Realist Painting is that anyone with a copy of Photoshop can whip out a pretty good looking Realist Painting-sort of. But playing with pixels isn’t really art, is it? Janet Fish was the last realist artist that I really liked, and her work is still pretty amazing to me. But it isn’t exactly in the same class as Andrew Wyeth.
Andrew Wyeth’s art was never as good as his father’s as far as I am concerned, but it was still much better than many modern painters. Well, maybe I just like it because it was different from modern paintings. Some people lump Andrew Wyeth in with Norman Rockwell-well, that’s pretty damned good company as far as I am concerned.
