Andrew Wyeth, His Critics, and Small Town Mud | Hacker News Reader

Andrew Wyeth, His Critics, and Small Town Mud

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43 pointsprismatic11 comments

I've always thought that Andrew Wyeth's paintings were more troubling than comforting. I know nothing of the man and his politics, but to me there has always been a pensive sadness to the work.

I love the classic Mad Men scene that describes nostalgia as "the pain of an old wound" [1]. That's the most apt description I've encountered and I think much more of what we are dealing with in Wyeth's paintings.

[1] https://vimeo.com/20736616

My granddad met Andrew Wyeth and is good friends with his son Jamie, who's also a painter. There were a lot of famous artists involved in NASA's art program in the 70's [0].

> “Why Do Critics Still Hate Andrew Wyeth?”

At least from what I've been told it's because he and his family became really wealthy (I've seen the Ferraris). And he mostly rejected the whole art scene in NYC. Glad that that's pretty consistent with the article.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Wyeth#.22Eyewitness_to_S...

I think the article is saying that it's about his politics and theoretical stance rather than wealth. You can be wealthy and popular in the art world.

I can't speak to this case in particular but there's usually inside knowledge involved in art world assessments. The work might look good but if you've met the artist and he/she is an idiot, or they disdain every living and dead artist you like... Well, it's difficult to sustain a positive critical opinion.

That might sound irrational, but I think it's justifiable as a result of the fact that people and human relationships are more complex and important than artifacts.

Christina's World hangs in MOMA, not far from many of the most famous paintings on the planet.

It's not out of place; I found it striking. See if you agree.

You owe yourself a few hours on the 5th floor of MOMA in NYC, it's great.

That isn't just a dead deer. It's half a winter's worth of meat.

That's the beauty of art isn't it - it's open to interpretation. It is interesting that you see it that way. My knee-jerk reaction to feel intensely sad for the deer but it is informed by my background as a vegetarian born in a warm climate.

The painting tells me a lot about myself and my biases.

I've never known a hunter who enjoyed killing, or sought to inflict suffering; indeed the primary standard of skill, especially with a rifle, is that one's prey drop on the spot, and should death not be immediate, one uses one's knife to deliver a coup de grace. This has been the way of all the hunters I've ever known, and in the rural side of my family there've been many.

I don't mean to make it sound like some sort of spiritual thing; it is not possible to have helped clean a carcass and still romanticize the practice of hunting. I explain it to substantiate this statement: the deer immortalized in that painting almost certainly died quickly, cleanly, and with a minimum of fear and pain. Of all the creatures likely to predate upon a quadruped herbivore, humans are the only ones who worry at all about that sort of thing, much less consider such outcomes worth effort to produce.

It speaks well of your kindness to sorrow at the death of a deer, and I don't mean to suggest that you shouldn't. But there are nuances here which are easy to overlook absent direct experience, and having seen them much closer to than many, I thought I'd take the time to explain a bit, in the hope that it might be of some little value to you.

Thank you for posting this, I hadn't thought about AW for years. It is an interesting angle.

Anybody interested in Andrew Wyeth (and general appreciation of illustration as art) should check out David Apatoff's blog - Illustration Art.

Blog - http://illustrationart.blogspot.in

His post on the passing of Andrew Wyeth - http://illustrationart.blogspot.in/2009/01/andrew-wyeth-abst...

I always preferred the father, N.C. Wyeth. He did some fantastic paintings for illustrated editions of classic literature.

If you're ever in Rockland, Maine, the Farnsworth Museum[1] has an extensive collection of works by the Wyeths.

[1] http://www.farnsworthmuseum.org/

I've loved Andrew Wyeth's work since an exhibit of it came through our small town art museum. I wondered at the time how that tiny, unprestigious spot could attract works of such quality. I guess I know now.

It's unfortunate that there aren't high quality reproductions of many of his works.

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