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Wyeth: Artists
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"What is most true about Wyeth's art is its fidelity to this way of looking, to this internal stream of deductive language country people listen to as they move around. (Indeed, Wyeth's art is a kind of record of that movement. Like country life it is full of the rhythms of walking, of perspectives changing slowly with approach and withdrawal, of sudden details switched into distance with a glance.) Unlike any of the other artists in this book, in whom the idea of the voice is a significant convention, this rural voice in Wyeth's work is closest to an actual voice, a mode of reading the landscape to oneself from the point of view of a dweller in it. Intimately connected to a way of life, this voice, when deprived of its referent, drops out of the picture, leaving clich6 behind. Thus Wyeth's audience is made up of city dwellers who like the clichés, and country dwellers who read his pictures as they read nature and find them true.
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Wyeth’s influence in the work of some of today’s most important contemporary artists from Jamie Wyeth to Bo Bartlett is obvious. In addition, Wyeth’s artwork has captured the scholarly interest of curators and art historians on the international stage as he aptly and lovingly documents the American scene.
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"Wyeth's success, within which he apparently resides easily enough, arouses in the "genuine" artist a contempt that is obligatory if he is to maintain his intellectual respectability. The artist-hero is expected to be so troubled by his success that he reinforces his myth by rejecting it-... raging, as it were, against the bars in that zoo to which American society generally relegates its cultural activities. Success cuts off careers in America for a very sharp reason. It makes the artist part of what he has based his art on rejecting: the values of the majority and the commercial engines supporting them. The divided mind and the aborted career usually have been attributed to the crassness of American society or some such easily apprehended generality. More acutely felt by the successful artist or writer, however, may be the closing of the ranks among his colleagues, and an exclusion, prompted by envy and intolerance, that amounts almost to an expulsion.
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Wyeth is well known for his interpretations of the austere rural landscapes of Pennsylvania and Maine and the people who live there. Based on his contribution to American realism he is deemed to be one of the most celebrated living artists of all time.
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Watch the fascinating life of ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev unfold through the portraits of Jamie Wyeth. When American artist Wyeth met Nureyev in 1977, the dancer’s charismatic personality and immense talent immediately captivated him. Thus began a remarkable friendship, resulting in over 35 paintings and drawings of Nureyev. Explore a sampling of these incredible works—many of which are presented online for the first time.
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In a choice reflecting public taste in painting, President John F. Kennedy named Wyeth in 1963 as the first artist to receive the Presidential Freedom Award, the country’s highest civilian award. Another president, Richard Nixon, honored Wyeth in 1970 with a dinner and private exhibition of his paintings at the White House. On that "first time" occasion Nixon toasted him as the painter who had "caught the heart of America." Wyeth’s other tributes include the gold medal for painting of the National Institute of Arts and Letters for 1965 and scores of painting and watercolor prizes and honorary degrees. In 1977 he made his first trip to Europe, to be inducted into the French Academy of the Fine Arts, becoming the only American artist since John Singer Sargent to be admitted to the Academy. The Soviet Academy of the Arts elected him an honorary member in 1978.
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