Pop Artist or Rightly Celebrated Genius?

Imagine an artist who created hundreds of works with fewer than maybe 20 subjects. This is the incredible statistic that describes the work of Andrew Wyeth. Once his career really began, his only subjects came from his home in Pennsylvania and his summer cottage in Cushing, Maine. He painted his neighbors and those closest to him, believing that since they were what he knew they would truly make the best subjects. Wyeth is one of America’s most well-known and publicly celebrated painters. In the article “Wyeth’s World” in the Smithsonian magazine, Wyeth’s reputation with critics is thoroughly discussed. The author supports Wyeth, and I also agree with the validity of Wyeth’s fame as well as the positive qualities of his paintings. Despite or possibly because of his popularity however, he has been unable to attain extensive support and celebration from art historians and critics. Due largely to his success in the art world, Wyeth has become a very controversial artist, with not only his methods but his value as a painter constantly being questioned. Many have ruled him out as a “serious” painter, basically reducing him to a pop artist, someone only in it for the money and fame. It seems to me however, if you look at the details of his works, they are much too subtle and seemingly simple to be the attempts of a man seeking only public attention.
A work of art that grabs the most attention of the largely art ignorant public is through the use of outlandish, big, bright images. If one cannot help but see a painting, obviously they will pay attention to it. In my opinion if an artist were truly just going for popularity and attention from the public, they would be better served by painting a more ‘obnoxious’ piece of work. One of the most resilient qualities of Wyeth’s works is the dark, subdued colors he uses. Desolate browns and grays dominate the landscapes and only a few, if any bright patches are present.
The genius of Wyeth’s work is his ability to make his simple, dark images appealing to the public. I think that this wasn’t his main goal when he started out. In fact he was not even behind the showing of his first paintings. Wyeth was truly a man who painted for himself, which is why he continued to use the subjects he liked best and stuck to his style. He has received much criticism for being so dark and melancholy, with claims that he is not accurately depicting the areas he paints. The former curator of the Museum of Modern Art, Robert Storr holds that Wyeth does not even accomplish what his works are most famous for, truly depicting the lives that he sees, saying that instead the paintings are “a very contrived version of what is true about simple Americans....I was born in Maine. I know these people and I know. Nothing about Wyeth is honest. He always goes back to that manicured desolation....He’s so averse to color, to allowing real air—the breath of nature—into his pictures.” And yet he does not change. Wyeth continues to paint to this day, and he has refused to give in to the critics and change what his works are. His paintings are still of the people, places and objects that he sees every day. The fact that he paints ordinary, typical objects further contradicts the argument that Wyeth only paints for money or public attention. Again paintings with such simple subjects will not be likely to draw much attention from the public. Nothing about Andrew Wyeth’s work truly alludes to a primary concern for fortune and fame.
One of the instances that made Wyeth such a target as a potential pop artist was his reveal of more than one hundred paintings that he had completed in total secrecy.
These paintings became a huge topic of discussion not only in the art world but in the discussions of everyday Americans. They received so much attention that they were almost immediately put on display as a complete collection. All of the paintings were of his neighbor Helga, many of them nude or in extremely intimate positions, which only helped to encourage the discussions, though Wyeth and his wife have attempted to dispel rumors of a sexual relationship. While Wyeth maintained that he only kept them hidden because they didn’t flow as well with the subjects of his other paintings, many critics continue to label it as an underhanded publicity stunt. While the reveal did bring him further fortune and fame, it seems that the timing is quite obscure. If it had really been a final attempt for attention in the public eye it seems that a reveal close to his time of death would have been the most opportune.
While Andrew Wyeth has undoubtedly achieved great fame and renown as an artist and received the inherent wealth that accompanies that stature, I think the style and subjects of his work show that it has never been his intention to create purely for such trivial gains.