THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 11, 1994 TAG: 9412080647
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
What strikes one immediately is the intensity of color, the incandescent blues and crimsons, yellows and greens that seem to stream from the pages like sunlight through stained glass.
Then come the rough vigor and variety of subject, from flowers in the morning to wild ponies at dusk. City, country. Exuberant clowns, grieving saints, flamboyant nudes.
The iconographic portrait of the artist's wife, ``Anna's Eyes,'' impels observers to look upon that luminous face all the way into its bright regard, as if summoning up a beautiful mirror of our better selves.
Five years after his death, Theo Wildanger still teaches us to see.
``It was some years into my relationship with Theo that I realized what a great storyteller he was and that he had a medium, his paints, that carried him far beyond his spoken languages,'' reports Jim Kincaid, WVEC-TV news anchor and son-in-law of the artist. ``And I use the plural here, because Theo spoke several languages with great fluency. My great regret was that English was not among them.
``But, by and by, his smattering of English, and my smattering of German, and trace of French, and our common respect for Latin, enabled us to develop a language which we two spoke fluently, to the exclusion of the remainder of humanity.''
Kincaid has become Wildanger's interpreter in Theo (Wildanger Collection, 60 pp., $21.95), a reminiscence and portfolio of the artist's work. With the economy and wit that have become the newsman's trademarks on television, Kincaid writes affectionately of a gifted individual who was at once his relative and friend. Expatriate Luxembourger Wildanger was 77 when he moved in with his daughter, Catherine, and Jim at their rural Prince Edward County retreat.
``When Theo would cry out from his painting station on the back porch of the old farmhouse at Elam, `Zhim . . . komm . . . I haf mak a beauty t'ing,' '' Kincaid recalls, ``I would know I was about to be introduced to a new painting. And a `beauty thing' it would surely be.
``Sometimes a dark beauty. Sometimes sharp and accusing. But always a `beauty thing.' ''
The frontispiece photo of Wildanger (1905-1989) reveals the keen countenance of a roused eagle, penetrating but meditative, mouth clamped down upon a pipe. He was a handsome man. But his were the rugged good looks of an old oak, hewn and scored by the storms and seasons.
Kincaid smokes a pipe, too. His photo provides an equally penetrating gaze. Clearly the older man and the younger shared a trained observer's bond.
``He didn't go to very much school,'' says Kincaid from the same Virginia farm they shared years ago. ``His schooling was like my own, a matter of picking up knowledge as he went along. I graduated, just barely, high school in Russellville, Ark.
``We both went through life having to do without things a lot of folks take for granted. And we both managed at the same time to acquire an appreciation for the finer things. It was more a brother-brother relationship than a father-son.''
They had seen war - Wildanger's in Europe, Kincaid's in Vietnam. They both loved Catherine and the children. They both loved Elam.
``It was kind of a gnawing feeling for several years after his death that Theo deserved to be appreciated on a broader scale than he was,'' Kincaid says of the impetus to write about his father-in-law.
Wildanger never sold a painting; instead, he gave hundreds of them away.
Now a few are on view at the Palmer-Rae Gallery on Granby Street in Norfolk. Others are at the Gallerie de Castiglione in Paris. For those of us who cannot afford originals, there is Kincaid's beautifully illustrated book, available at Turn the Page and the Bibliopath in Norfolk or by sending $21.95, plus $4 mailing and handling, to the Wildanger Collection, PO Box 175, Norfolk 23501. MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Theo Wildanger's paintings include ``Anna's Eyes,'' below, a
portrait of his wife.
by CNB