My father’s world
I learned a lot about art from my father. That’s a little unusual if you consider that he is a retired civil engineer, but what he’s taught me doesn’t have anything to do with the finer points of making artwork. His wisdom is all on the appreciation end of art, and, since I can remember, my papa has loved Andrew Wyeth’s work.
To begin with I was interested in Wyeth’s paintings as a window into my father’s way of thinking, but non-plussed by the work itself. The palette was too dull for my tastes and the compositions always read to me as awkward. There seemed to be a “mistaken snapshot” quality to them, like a photo taken before the taker had gotten everything lined up for the photo she-he actually intended to take.
Andrew Wyeth’s Wind From The Sea 1947
I decided that, if Wyeth’s works were photos instead of tempera paintings, no one would look twice at them. Their value had to exist entirely in technique, in the magical realism that is so much more than realism but still so much less than I wanted out of a painter’s manner.
It was with this view of Wyeth’s œuvre that, a few years ago, while visiting the Museum of Modern Art in New York, I ran into Christina’s World.
Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World 1948
There’s nothing original in being struck by this piece. If you do a quick search of the work online, you’ll find countless touching narratives about everyone and anyone’s experiences of this painting. It’s just one of those images.
At the time, I noted my reaction to the painting: I almost couldn’t believe that it was Wyeth’s work. I didn’t think he had this sort of thing in him. And, while I’m not entirely sure what I meant by “this sort of thing,” I do know that finding out the story behind the piece ruined my experience of it (I’ll include the backstory in a note,* so don’t look if you don’t want to know it!). It isn’t that the inspiration for this image isn’t inspirational. It’s that I liked not knowing why this painting was made. I liked the mystery, and I especially liked making up my own story.
In the five years since my disappointing encounter with Christina’s World, I hadn’t thought much about Wyeth’s work, despite my father’s continued efforts to interest me. Still, when I heard that the artist died last Saturday at the age of 91, I felt compelled to pick up a book about his work which my father had recently lent me. Papa had bookmarked a particular image and written me a note about what I might get out of it. Looking at The Patriot and then flipping through the other images, I realized that the “mistaken snapshot” feel of the work had grown on me.
There is something so mysterious about Wyeth’s compositions specifically because these “oops” images needed more than an ill-timed shutter release to make them. They are a kind of purposeful mistake, and, in that way, they have everything that Christina’s World has, but in a subtler form. They have a delicious mystery about them, and I have a mystery solved: I finally understand what my father sees in the work.
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*Wyeth created this image based on the story of Christina Olson, his neighbor in Maine. Christina was crippled by an undiagnosed muscular deterioration (possibly polio) that paralyzed her lower body. The artist was standing in the subject’s home watching her crawl across the field when he was inspired to create a painting to celebrate Christina’s spirit.
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Iris santiAgo...
I have the cristinas world, painting I purchase in a flea market. I was wondering if it’s an original or a replica. It’s sign by Andrew Wyeth. can you send me information about this painting and if it has any value. Thanking you in Advance.
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