The Painted Hype: Clifford Still and Andrew Wyeth

Published Dec 28 2008, 11:32 AM by Ken Greenleaf

The news of the release of the bulk of Clifford Still’s work to a museum in Denver dedicated to his work reminds me of the hype machine of another wildly overrated painter, Andrew Wyeth a number of years ago.

Clifford Still famously declined to sell any more of his work once he had sold enough to support his family in some comfort, about 180 paintings (note that that must have meant a considerable sum for each). He made extraordinary claims for his work, saying that “a single stroke of paint, backed by a mind that understood its potency and implications, could restore to may the freedom lost in twenty centuries of apology and devices for subjugation.” That’s an aspiration that borders on the delusional.

He was never one of the greatest of painters of his period, more on the level of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko on a bad day than Jackson Pollock, Hans Hoffmann and Mark Rothko on a good day. He managed his career pretty well, getting his work placed in major museums, usually separated from other painters whose work he hated. He stored the many he didn’t sell in Maryland, and said in his will (he died in 1980) that any city that put up a museum for him could have all of them. In the meantime, the works couldn’t be exhibited or conserved. Finally Denver has taken the bait, and now the work will be headed west. I wish them joy of their acquisition.

About twenty years ago the news broke of the uncovering of a ‘hidden’ group of 240 paintings by Andrew Wyeth, all using a single model named Helga. In a masterstroke of public relations, the Wyeths and a collector named Leonard Andrews managed to get the news covered simultaneously on the covers of Time and Newsweek. It was the first time that any artist got both covers at once. There were murmurs of a secret relationship behind Wyeth’s wife’s back, and of the paintings remaining hidden for fifteen years. This was all media management, of course. Mrs. Wyeth had several of the paintings in her personal collection, and Leonard Andrews had the rights to publish the Helga images on cards.

Traveling exhibitions were organized, one of which I saw. Whatever respect I might have harbored for Andrew Wyeth as a painter was eroded completely away. His work just isn’t very good. The National Gallery in Washington showed the paintings with great fanfare. The catalog became a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection. The Metropolitan Museum in New York, immune from the hype, took a pass on them.

Wyeth’s reputation, like Grant Wood’s, is based mainly on an erroneous interpretation of one painting, ‘Christina’s World.’ Unlike Clifford Still, Andrew Wyeth has been able to get others to do his hype-building for him. Sometime it’s done by his family. I once witnessed a gallery talk by a granddaughter at the Farnsworth museum. This earnest young woman talked about his broad color range and level of detail. Speaking of a painting of a room with a door and a dog, she said you could see a reflection of the room in the doorknob if you looked closely enough. Wyeth’s color and tonal range are both quite narrow, and the remark about the doorknob was pure bull. One of Wyeth’s few strengths as a painter is his ability to project the illusion of lots of colors when not many are present.

I was reminded of a carnival I once visited in my rural adolescence, in which a boozy middle-aged carny dressed on the left as woman and on the right as a man, was presented to us as a hermaphrodite. The barker showed us the carny’s right arm first, and then the left, solemnly declaiming the left was much more slender and more feminine the right. The arms were pretty much the same, both flabby and hairy, but us hayseed boobs standing on the grass strained to see them as different, at least for a few minutes. I learned a lot about public relations from that barker.

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4 Comments

Sharky said:

Spoken like someone who's never sat quietly in a room with Still's paintings.

This isn't art criticism; this is more akin to a diatribe about Paris Hilton, and just as worthy of our dismissal.

December 29, 2008 10:47 AM
Ken Greenleaf said:

Actually, I have sat in a room with Still's paintings quite a number of times over the years. Enough times to come away with the conviction that they are not among the best.

December 30, 2008 8:45 AM
Ken Greenleaf said:

Further, this piece is not about the art but about the hype. Andy Warhol proved conclusively that it's more important to be famous than good. Things still might be good, and the artist famous, but they don't always coincide.

December 30, 2008 4:11 PM
iremember said:

The art critics of the twentieth and twenty first century have a vested interest in modern art. Especially New York avant-garde art. This is something very much akin to the popular music scene that also is souless, empty, and talentless. Thus we suspect that is the reason for the New York art scene to try to dictate taste to the rest of the country. The overriding reason is money and power. Much like the ancient Egyptian priests who were also idiots, albeit clever idiots. Don't be fooled by the large crowd of sheep that don't think for themselves and visit the large modern art meccas. They have been brainwashed into believing that all the trash in the museum is worthy of being there. We have been told that some modern isms are the only American invention in the art world. Unfortunately much current modern art is shallow and decorative. If these modern art inventions are the best we can do then we have our work cut out for us. To ask the viewer to see nothing in your art is asking too much. This is the type of thing that should be reserved for building decorations and mouldings for furniture. True art is not mere imitation. These so-called critics of taste in many instances are not great artists themselves and wouldn't know how to paint a great picture if their life depended on it. Great art is a synthesis of life. A coordination of great design, which is all that modern has and nothing else, a feeling for the subject, great skill, and yes a sense of form. Abstract modern art has only the design. Great realist art begins with design and then adds the other elements that modern art sorely lacks. Great realistic art is never an imitation of the subject like a camera would give. Critics seem to not understand this. Critics believe that they have great understanding and knowledge enough to dictate our tastes in art. In reality many Art critics are are not worldly enough or smart enough to dictate taste to me or to anyone else. I'm sure that many architects, engineers, and scientists would rely on their own artistic judgment over a mere art critic. Wake up art world. Andrew Wyeth and other great realistic artists will over time become the remembered artists of the last century. Fashion is fickle, but great art is timeless. Modern art is infested with Daubists. Stop investing large sums of money to pad your museums with modern trash. Mere daubs of color without meaning are meaningless. They are fine for decoration but little else and they definitely do not qualify as great Art or deserve great patronage.

January 18, 2009 1:46 PM

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The Painted Hype: Clifford Still and Andrew Wyeth

4 Comments

Sharky said:

Ken Greenleaf said:

Ken Greenleaf said:

iremember said:

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