ArtsBeat

"Christina's World," 1948, by Andrew Wyeth. Tempera on gessoed panel.

A print of this painting, Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World," hung on my grandparents' wall for many years. I suspect, like many thousands of children growing up in houses where a Wyeth print of this particular painting was somewhere around, I was captivated by it.

The sheer loneliness of the painting, the mystery of why this girl was such a long way from her solitary house in the distance, got my brain spinning. I invented stories about what was happening up in that frame above the couch. Sometimes the girl was an Indian princess perplexed by the presence of this ominous old farm house on an otherwise pristine landscape. Or maybe she was just taking a break from her overbearing parents who lived in the house, and the painting captured the aching moment she realized she wanted to go back.

Christopher Knight, at the L.A. Times, writes that the painting embodied "a nostalgic yearning for a return to what had been normalcy" for troops returning home after World War II. Whatever it means to you, the painting ranks as one of the most popular of the 20th century, and a huge attraction at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where it is always on view.

Today, Wyeth, who disavowed "Christina's World" as "a complete flat tire" in 1948, according to The New York Times, died today at the age of 91. It's probably fair to say that, until today, he was the most popular living artist in America.

Wyeth's most popular work, like his entire oeuvre, was largely reviled by the art world but embraced by the public at large. He was, as Time writer Richard Lacayo put it, "one of those beloved artists the art world never quite knew what to do with."

And to me, that's not a small part of his appeal. Like Norman Rockwell (but unlike Wyeth's artistic relatives Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper and others who were better received), Wyeth never gave much credit to the elite circles of the art world and never participated in its stylistic or intellectual movements. In return, the art world was sometimes vitriolically dismissive of his work.

Works by Wyeth are in the collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (which owns two watercolors and one ink drawing), as well as dozens of other major museums and collections. The Farnsworth Museum Brandywine River Museum, in Wyeth's hometown of Chadds Ford, Penn. and the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine, are also largely dedicated to the work of the Wyeth family.

This painting, by Jiang Lin, is a sort of homage to Wyeth's most famous work. It's in the collection of the Burchfield Penney Art Center and is now on view in its main opening exhibition:

Obituaries, reminiscences and postmortem critiques:

Terry Teachout  / CultureGrrl / New York Times / Los Angeles Times / Christopher Knight at Culture Monster

--Colin Dabkowski

Images courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art and Burchfield Penney Art Center.