Painter Of Darkness

In a review of the Andrew Wyeth exhibition now at the National Gallery of Art, Andrew Ferguson argues that the artist’s work is more “terrifying” than is commonly understood:

Anyone familiar only with Wyeth as his severest critics rendered him – i.e., as a Thomas Kinkade-like lineworker pumping out commercial art fit only (as one critic said) for the homes of retired Republican politicians and the boardrooms of bankrupt banks – will do well to take his time wandering this show. It quickly becomes clear how thoroughly the popular debates of decades past got Wyeth wrong. If these pictures are comforting nostalgia for a simpler past, “illustrations of the good life,” and “kindly sermons,” then I am Marie of Romania. Beneath the frequent prettiness, most of the pictures are just this side of harrowing, not just lonesome and melancholy but portraits of life as it seeps inevitably away. The wind that lifts the lace curtain in Wind from the Sea makes the hair on your arms stand up.

Jamie Wyeth, Andrew’s son and a celebrated artist himself, confesses to being puzzled by the benign view of Wyeth’s work. “My father’s work is terrifying,” he said. It’s not sentimental. It’s luminous! But in a creepy way. There was a lot more to him, in other words, than many of his friends and enemies picked up on – a constant hint, at least, of menace that keeps all of us at a distance from him and his work.

(Image: Wind from the Sea, 1947, tempera on hardboard © Andrew Wyeth. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Gift of Charles H. Morgan)