Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510270100
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PEG COUGHLIN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: KANSAS CITY, MO. LENGTH: Medium
The popularity - and controversy - that has surrounded the modern realist for decades won't be lost in the heartland.
``This retrospective will revive the conversation about just what is valuable about art to us in America, and just how Wyeth is valuable, both his work itself and his contribution to American art in this century,'' said museum director Marc Wilson.
Thousands of visitors are expected for ``Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography,'' a collection of 138 watercolors, temperas, drybrush works and drawings. The show continues through Nov. 26.
The museum received a record 2,000 responses within 48 hours of sending invitations to members-only viewings, Wilson said. Inquiries about the show have come from across the country. Four hotels near the museum are offering special packages for the exhibit.
But the exhibit is also reviving debate over the merit of Wyeth's work, acknowledged in the museum's literature about the show.
One passage reads: ``Although Wyeth had no pupils but his son, Jamie, no artist followers and no school that had emerged around him, he was essentially ostracized from the artistic community, with epithets such as `the barnyard soothsayer,' `the grand patriarch of American schlock' and `the poor man's Andy Warhol.'''
Local banker R. Crosby Kemper, a Wyeth friend and collector whose financial support helped bring the show to Kansas City, dismisses such criticism and points out the artist's popularity.
``Wyeth's paintings are loved by the American people,'' said Kemper, chairman and chief executive officer of UMB Banks and head of the Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation, which has given two Wyeth works to the museum, including the 1981 tempera ``Battleground.''
Margaret Conrads, the museum's curator of American art and coordinator of the Kansas City show, agrees that ``people are wildly crazy about Wyeth'' and that critics are hard on him because his art sells.
``At his first one-man show in New York, every single picture sold in 24 hours,'' she said. ``Just below the easy reality is a complex mindscape.''
Wyeth's defenders say his peaceful rural visions of Chadds Ford, Pa., and Cushing, Maine, are familiar, technically impressive, even profound. But critics fault him for his lack of training (he was tutored at home and his illustrator father, N.C. Wyeth, was his major artistic influence) and his provincialism. They say his art cannot be valuable if it is so easily understood.
Wyeth's best-known work, ``Christina's World,'' his 1948 painting of neighbor Christina Olson lying in a field looking across her land and home, is not included in the show. The Museum of Modern Art, which owns the 1948 piece, would not allow it to travel because of its fragile condition.
But the show does include several studies and nudes of the famous Helga Testorf, a former neighbor he secretly painted over a 15-year period, and his young neighbor, Siri Erickson. Among those works are: ``Siri,'' ``Virgin,'' ``Black Velvet'' and ``Barracoon.''
Also included in the show is ``Distant Thunder,'' which was done at the height of Wyeth's popularity with the public and critics. The 1961 tempera depicts his wife, Betsy, napping with a sunhat over her face in a field after picking blueberries, with the family dog, Rattler, nearby wearing an almost alarmed expression.
Half of the works on display, many framed in wood resembling weathered barn siding, chronicle Wyeth's interaction with three families, the Olsons and the Ericksons of Cushing and the Kuerners of Chadds Ford. Wyeth still lives and works in those areas.
The retrospective was created under the auspices of the Japanese communications company Chunichi Shimbun. It was exhibited at the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, the Bunkamura Museum of Art in Tokyo and the Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art before coming to Kansas City.
Wyeth has been popular with the Japanese since his works were first introduced to them in a 1955 exhibit.
by CNB