An artist hero of mine died today. If public popularity counted in the art world, he would be hailed as one of America's if not the world's greatest artists. But the art world is fickle, always running after the latest 'new thing'. So while his paintings sell for millions, the art critics turn their nose up at his work. Not that it matters. Many great artists have endured the test of time (Rembrandt, Van Gogh to name a couple) and time will tell if Andrew will as well. I remember finding his painting "Christina's World' in a dark corner of the new MOMA, as if they were embarrassed to show it along side all the modern stuff. In a Time magazine obituary, they write:
"Even when Wyeth is admitted into the canon, he's held a bit at arm's length. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City owns his most famous canvas, Christina's World, which it acquired in 1948, soon after it was painted, for just $1,800. But while the picture is always on display at MoMA, it's consigned to what you might call an anteroom on the margins of the more respectably modern galleries, a salon des refuses that it shares with Edward Hopper's House by the Railroad. Seeing Christina splayed across her field of grass, gazing toward that house on the horizon, it's easy to imagine that it's the citadel of MoMA she's looking at so poignantly, the place she still has not entirely entered, even if she is inside."
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1872404,00.html?imw=Y
Here is to you, Andrew, may you continue painting where ever you are, and the critics be damned....
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