You, Andrew Wyeth

[decemberthirty]

And here face down beneath the sun
Here upon Earth's noonward height
To feel the always coming on
The always rising of the night:

To feel creep up the curving East
The earthy chill of dusk and slow
upon those underlands the vast
And ever climbing shadow grow

MacLeish wasn't addressing Andrew Wyeth, of course, but he may as well have been. I went to the Wyeth exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art yesterday, and I'm left with a lingering impression of room after room full of Wyeth's endless, dream-like landscape, those grey-green Pennsylvania hillsides stretching on from one painting to the next. His paintings are all unmistakably set in the same world: a world where it is always winter, where the light is always thin and pale, and where the earthy chill of dusk is ever-present and night is always just a moment away. It got a bit wearying by the end -- all the emotional intensity, the feeling of suspended animation, of waiting for something that is just about to happen, every painting like a held breath -- but I was impressed by Wyeth's ability to imbue every object with a significance greater than itself, so that a still-life that, in the hands of another artist, might have been merely a shell on a table was somehow indefinably more meaningful than that. How does one do that in a visual medium?

I was also amazed by Wyeth's ability to make paintings built around a sense of absence, where what is not in the frame is more important than anything that is. The best example of this was also my favorite piece in the show: Love in the Afternoon.



There was one room in the exhibition that was devoted to tracking Wyeth's creative process as he worked on a single painting. The room featured a series of sketches and studies for Groundhog Day, hung in chronological order along with Wyeth's own explanations of the development of the painting throughout its various stages. I was surprised to see how much his conception of the painting changed as he worked. He began with sketches of a woman sitting by a window with a dog sleeping nearby; the dog disappeared; first the table became the focus, then the view outside the window; the woman vanished; the dog reappeared, outdoors this time, next to a pile of logs; the dog disappeared again as the scene shifted back indoors. The finished painting is a haunting image of a table with an empty place setting and a window that looks out on newly-cut tree trunks, but the final result was less important to me than the lesson of the room: art takes work.

I was disheartened (as I almost always am) by the number of people there who spent their entire time plugged into the audio tour. I'm sure that the tour was informative, but the fact that 95% of the patrons opted for it seems to me to indicate a widespread reluctance or fear of simply engaging with art, and an inability to trust your own opinion. I'm afraid that looking down on these audio tours makes me a bit of a snob, but it makes me sad that every time I go to a major exhibition I find crowds of zombiefied people with their headphones, staring around blankly, not interacting with the art or with each other...

Comments

[slowlyawake.livejournal.com]

Interesting take on the audio tour. I'd just mention that zombiefied people beat having to listen to a lot of "what is that supposed to be?" and other annoying comments. I guess I don't mind seeing people using the tours, because it at least shows a willingness to learn. Some people aren't conditioned to interact. At the end of the day, I prefer silent people to those making dumb comments. :)

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I agree. Sure, hearing a lot of "What is that supposed to be?" can be annoying, but at least those people are trying to figure out what it is they're looking at, rather than just waiting for the voice in the headphones to tell them what it is. Maybe the thing that really bothers me about those audio tours is the passivity of it...

Also, I see what you mean about the willingness to learn, and I do feel that going to an exhibition and using the audio tour is better than not going at all, but for me an art museum (as opposed to a science or history museum, for instance) isn't really about learning, per se. Or perhaps what I mean is that it's about a different type of learning--learning things that are a bit vaguer, more abstract, more grandiose than the type of biographical info and received critical opinion that you can get from a recording. I don't know, though, I may just be being pretentious and snobby again.

And, hey, if we're going to argue this based solely on the annoyingness factor, I couldn't even count how many times I got bumped into on Saturday by people wandering around the galleries paying no attention to their physical surroundings... Now that's annoying! :)

[moiethegreat.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to read this because just a few days ago I was at the National Gallery in DC and looking at an exhibit on Dadaism. I liked it but Kev kept exclaiming that he wishs art museums weren't so stuffy and that the people there would actually enjoy the art rather than being totally silent and walking around in front of it. They wanted conversation, engagement, and enjoyment which I think is similiar to what you were saying. I sorta agreed although I find quiet art museums to be rather peaceful. Just kinda funny about the timing since I was just having a similiar discussion.

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's definitely a balance between the amount of liveliness and the amount of peace and quiet you want in a museum... When I go to an art museum with Mom, we almost always make it a point to joke around and laugh a little bit -- not in an obnoxiously loud way, but just because so many people seem to act like laughing is not allowed in the presence of Art. That seems to me like another manifestation of the way people feel intimidated by art and can't just trust their own responses.

How did you like the Dadaism show? I bet there was probably some stuff there you could have laughed at!

[moiethegreat.livejournal.com]

I liked the show ok. I found it to be interesting rather than artistically beautiful or something like that. The principles and intellectual beliefs behind the art were more interesting, in my opinion, than the art itself. I didn't get to look at it too closely as I was with people who were there to humour me, not because they particularly wanted to see an art museum. On a side note, have you ever read "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues"?

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

Heh heh, forcing the Streak to get some culture, huh? Well, it can only do him good!

I haven't read Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Tom Robbins, right? I've never read anything of his... But I think Dad probably has, so you could try asking him.

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

I love Wyeth. I haven't seen Love in the Afternoon before, but it reminds me of a character I have kicking around in my head. She came about via a mental view of a Novemberish landscape outside of a window like that one.

The only time I've ever used an audio tour was for the traveling "Imperial Tombs of China" exhibit, with Leonard Nemoy doing the tour. I loved it at the time; loved the secret independence of it, loved the fact that the headphones made me feel like I was alone in those great, crowded exhibition halls. I'm not sure how it would work with an art show, though...

[decemberthirty.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting perspective. I hadn't really thought about the role of an audio tour in a non-art exhibit, probably because I spend so much more time in art museums than museums of any other kind. Now that I think about, I can't remember the last time I went to a major show that wasn't an art exhibition, so I'm not sure how I would feel about audio tours in other circumstances. The only time I've ever used them myself was in a couple of palaces that I toured in England, and I found that they were informative, but didn't really seem to add much to the experience.

I don't know where Love in the Afternoon resides when it's not part of this show, but you really should see it if you get the chance. This little reproduction doesn't come close to doing it justice.