Volume 23, Number 20 · December 9, 1976
Art for Christmas
By John Richardson
"Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth: Kuerners and Olsons"
Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 1976-February 1977
Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth: Kuerners and Olsons
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 192 pp., $5.95 (paper)
Wyeth at Kuerners
by Betsy James Wyeth
Houghton Mifflin, 324, 370 illus. pp., $75.00 thereafter
How appropriate that the Metropolitan Museum should celebrate the end of this bicentennial year with an Andrew Wyeth exhibition! The institution, the art, the occasion were undeniably destined for one another. The very titles—Groundhog Day, Hickory Smoked, Moose Horns, Logging Scoot—personify the American way of life. Likewise, the works themselves gladden the hearts of patriots, not to speak of powerful trustees and donors. Wyeth's tasteful blend of puritanism and nostalgia, verisimilitude and storytelling, epitomizes what a lot of WASPS and would-be WASPS expect in art. Even the artist's ominous view of the world, as exemplified by two small areas of the US—one of them, suitably enough, in the heart of the Dupont country—finds favor. Does it not correspond to these ominous times, just as Wyeth's self-congratulatory, m'as-tu vu technique corresponds to the self-congratulatory spirit of 1976?
Review, 2643 words
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