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FIN

AMrICAN
M A G A Z I N E
P REVI EWI NG UP COMI NG E XHI BI TI ONS , EVE NTS , S AL E S AND AUCTI ONS OF HI S TORI C F I NE ART
ISSUE 15 May/June 2014
48
Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In
By James D. Balestrieri
p a i n t i n g
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w i n d o w s
Left: Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Spring Fed, 1967.
Tempera on Masonite, 27 x 39 in. Collection of Bill
and Robin Weiss, Andrew Wyeth.
Right: Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Of at Sea, 1972.
Tempera on panel, 33 x 33 in. Private collection,
Andrew Wyeth.
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L
ike any business, but maybe a
little more so, the art business
has its sayings, its insider adages,
old chestnuts, to wit: We should look
as good as this painting does when were
this old, and Of the 200 paintings
Corot did, 400 are in the States. Like all
sayings, these have their grain of truth.
One saying in particular, heard most
often among art dealers, bears directly
on the exhibition Andrew Wyeth: Looking
Out, Looking In, at the National Gallery
of Art in Washington, D.C., from May
4 through November 30: The frame is
40 percent of a painting. In practice,
when applied to mediocre works, this
saying has merit. The right frame can
improve an indiferent canvas, though
the percentage would be tough to
quantify. But a good painting, or a great
one? Heres where the adage falls apart.
Good paintingsI can already hear the
protestsdont really need frames at all.
Good paintingsindeed, all paintings
come with their own frames. Window
frames. For what is a painting but a
windowa window on the world,
into the imagination, a framed slice
of another world, an alternate and
ultimately unique universe? To paint
windows within the window of the
painting, as Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009)
does in the paintings featured here, is
to call attention to what happens at the
edge of the canvas, at the point where
the artists frame meets the outside
world, and bring the concept of point
of view to the forefront. Through the
device of the window frame, Wyeth
multiplies the worlds in these works in
order to make viewers intensely aware
of their eyes and of the selectivity of
seeing as it relates both to our incessant
forming and reforming of the present
moment and our need to locate
ourselves in time and spacethe past
through the act of remembering.
Wind billows the lace curtains
inward. They brush you, move your
eyes to the open window, to the twin
ruts of the path that leads to and from
the line of shore and blade of sea at the
bottom left of the window frame. You
want to take that path in Wyeths 1947
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Wind from the Sea, 1947. Tempera on hardboard, 18 x 27
9
16 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., gift of Charles H. Morgan, Andrew Wyeth.
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painting Wind from the Sea. You want to
take it because the wind seems to want
you to take it. But the path ends outside
the house. The house is a barrier. You
want; at least, to see more of the sea, but
you cant, not from here. The painting
wont allow it. Look left of the narrow
shore and your eyes come to the veiny
cracks in the plaster at the edge of the
canvas. Dry. Like a tiny dry riverbed.
The opposite of what you want. What
can you do? You can remember the sea,
how it looked the last time you were
there, and you can yearn for it and
imagine how it will look when you see
it once again.
The window in The Pikes is small and
dark, set high in a stone wall weathered
by centuries. Its a cyclopean eye or a
mouth in a tight square o. The creeping
shadow seems to serve as some sort of
primitive sundial and you wonder what
will happenwhat might happen,
what mustwhen the shadow engulfs
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Rod and Reel, 1975. Watercolor on paper, 21 x 29 in.,
Dr. and Mrs. James David Brodell, Andrew Wyeth.
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Frostbitten, 1962. Watercolor on paper, 16 x 23 in. Private collection, Andrew Wyeth.
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the pikes. You want to turn that bucket
over and stand on it on tiptoe and peek
inside. But at what? At some chained
beast? At some scene out of the distant
past or distant future? This window isnt
a window at all: its a door. Only, as in
all good science fctionsomething out
of Lovecraft, perhapsit isnt a door, its
a portal.
Andrew Wyeth told his biographer
that the 1967 painting, Spring Fed, was
inspired by the thoughts of the death
of one of his childhood heroes, Robin
Hood. He imagined Robin laid out
here, the sound of the running spring
water, the earths lifeblood, standing in
for the life of the hero, running out.
Wyeth might have been thinking of
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Widows Walk, 1990. Tempera on panel, 48 x 43
3
8 in. Private collection, Andrew Wyeth.
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his father here, the great N.C. Wyeth,
painter of Robin Hood, Long John
Silver, and King Arthur and so many
heroes that still fnd a place in the
minds of boys and loom large in the
memories of those of us who were
once boys. Perhaps, then, this is why
there are so many layers between us and
the early spring revealing itself under
the snow on the slope outside. The
layers of apertures and the muntin bars
between the many panes jail us in and
the bucket on the wall at right, mouth
out and down, makes any sound ring
and echo hollow and tinny. Only the
open window through the open door,
looking out on the cows, ofers any
respite, any avenue for memory, any
access to spring, to youth. You want to
fnd your old copy of Scribners Robin
Hood or Treasure Island, and read.
In Off at Sea and Rod and Reel
(painted in 1972 and 1975, respectively),
Wyeth uses light to fold windows into
mirrors. In each, our eye believes, at
frst, that it is looking out. A second
later, we realize that we are looking at
windows from the outside, but instead
of seeing in, the windows refect what is
behind us. To look in or out a window
and fnd that the window mirrors whats
behind you, what you have turned away
from is to ask what youve missed and
what you miss.
The empty hanger in Off at Sea
signals someones absence, a sailor or a
fsherman who hangs his wet coat on
the hanger when he comes home. When
combined with the gray, billowing sky,
narrow strip of land and the tiniest
suggestion of sea refected in the lower
left corner of the window (very much
in keeping with Wind from the Sea), the
scene suggests that there is no turning
away from the longing to fill that
absence. Squares of light on the long,
empty bench only reinforce the essential
loneliness of the moment.
If anything, Rod and Reel articulates
an even deeper sense of aloneness.
With the shade half pulled, looking
in is half-denied, and the mirror that
the window has become reflects a
fairly desolate world. Even the green
of the refected hill is infused with the
unrelieved gray of the sky and the pond
is fenced of. This window also refects
another window in a building across
the way, leaving us trapped between
refections, fat and one-dimensional.
The fshing tackle ofers some promise
of adventure and camaraderie, but a
closer look shows that this is old gear,
antique, and that there are two rods but
only one reel. And there are no hooks,
no lures, nothing to suggest that anyone
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Evening at Kuerners, 1970. Dry brush, 25 x 39 in. Private collection, Andrew Wyeth.
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Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), The Pikes, 1965. Watercolor on paper, 28 19 in. The San Diego Museum of Art,
gift of Mr. and Mrs. Norton S. Walbridge, Andrew Wyeth.
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has fshed here in a long time. Fishing
here is, at best, a memory; at worst, its
a symbol of a long gone past.
To look out a window is to long
to be there instead of here, then
future then, past then, both?instead
of now. To look out a window is to
find the present wanting, hollow and
unsatisfying. To look out a window is
to say, I wish. Perhaps its a wish to
be younger, or older. Or simply to be
out in the fresh air rather than indoors.
But to look in through a window is
to indulge the thrill of curiosity, to
long to know whats in there and add
whatever lies within to ones store of
knowledge and experience. Unless it
isnt. Unless its a desire for comfort
or a desire to hide, to be safe inside,
secure. To look in through a window is
to imagine, to project, to see yourself,
another self, there.
In these three stanzas from As
I Walked Out One Evening, W. H. Auden
captured in words what Andrew Wyeth
is after in his paintings of windows:
O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin,
And wonder what youve missed
O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress,
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless
O stand, stand at the window,
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart.
To look out or in through a window
is to long. To paint is to long. To look
at a painting is to longto long to
be different, elsewhere, to long for a
second chance, to long to know that
you still have one more in you, to
long to share in the artists impulse
to make art and to live in the hope
that your joy, anger, sorrow, pain
might one day gel into a painting, a
sculpture, a string quartet, a punk rock
anthem, that it might become a play, a
film, or a rhyming couplet instead of
vanishing as it morphs, one emotion
into the next, leaving you wondering
why it doesnt gel and when and
whether it will. What is painted is
the longing. Wyeths windows are the
stained glass of memory.
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), Room in the Mirror (study), 1948. Watercolor on paper, 22 x 30 in. Private collection, Andrew Wyeth.
Andrew Wyeth:
Looking Out, Looking In
On exhibit May 4-November 30
at the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, D.C., www.nga.gov.
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