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Wyeth: Paintings
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Among Wyeth’s most memorable works are some of his interior and exterior paintings of Christina’s house, including Wind from the Sea (1947), Seed Corn (1948), and Weather Side (1965). End of Olsons, a view of part of the roof and chimney of the house, was painted in 1969, the year after Christina’s death, and is the last of his pictures relating to the Olson environment. But among his neighbors in Maine, Wyeth found quite a different subject for his portraits in the teen-age girl, Siri, whose father, George Erickson, he painted in The Finn (1969). The seminude Bikini (1968), the topless Sauna (1969), and the nudes The Virgin (1969), Indian Summer (1970), and Black Water (1978) belong to a series that Robert Hughes in Time (September 3, 1973) placed among "the solidest and least theatrical of Wyeth’s work." In his interview with Hoving, Wyeth contrasted his pictures of Siri, which represented "an invigorating, zestful, powerful phenomenon," with those of Christina, "which symbolize the deterioration and the dwindling of something."
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In addition to books, Wyeth was illustrating for magazines, calendars, posters and murals. He even painted maps for the National Geographic Society! Above is a two-page spread from the July 1923 issue of Hearst's International. Below is a dashing scene from a Rafael Sabatini story, The Duel on the Beach in the September 1931 issue of Ladies' Home Journal.
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Museum exhibitions of Wyeth's paintings have set attendance records, but many art critics have been heavily critical of his work. Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for The Village Voice, derided his paintings as "Formulaic stuff not very effective even as illustrational 'realism'".[3] Hence the most common criticisms are that Wyeth's art verges on illustration, and that his predominantly rural subject matter is heavily weighted with sentiment. It is possible... that some critics dislike his work simply because it is so popular and appeals to people because it is representational in nature.
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When Mr. Wyeth turns ninety on July 12, the Museum will kick off a month-long schedule of special programs and events to celebrate and explore his work. It begins with a visual treasure hunt, an interactive event that focuses attention on some of the visual keys to Wyeth's work. On Saturday, July 14, the Museum holds an open house and family day that features music and art demonstrations as well as activities that parents and children can enjoy together. A giant birthday card for Wyeth is one of the highlights, and of course some birthday cake is on the menu.
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Wyeth communicates with his audience, numbered in millions, with an ease and fluency that amounts to a kind of genius. Sharing their beliefs, he is able to inflect them endlessly by giving the audience, like Billy Graham, a sense of community and individuality, stimulating a buried imaginative life while leaving the surface undisturbed. By fulfilling a communal need while being faithful to his own interests (in a context of shared beliefs), Wyeth's voice and myth echo each other in a way unknown in modernism. Truth to experience is the audience's criterion, checked by reference to nature, and if the experience itself is banal it remains undisturbed by the art. What the audience sees is not process or formal deftness, but an image, all at once. In this sense, modernism's increasing narcissism with respect to its own means measures the break-up of a community and the rising arc of the artist's alienation.
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Since 1969 Wyeth has served as a member of the advisory committee of the United States Postal Service. He designed one of the 1971 eight-cent Christmas stamps depicting the partridge in a pear tree of the English carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Wyeth was commissioned by President and Mrs. Ronald Reagan to produce the official White House Christmas cards for 1981 and 1984. In 1994 the U.S. Mint commissioned Wyeth to produce a portrait of Eunice Kennedy Shriver for use on the 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games Commemorative Coin commemorating her works with the Special Olympics. He volunteered his time and talent for the coin effort. The 1995 Special Olympics World Summer Games Commemorative Coin was the U.S. Mint's largest selling coin in 1995.
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