Andrew Wyeth Like You’ve Never Seen Him Before

One of America's 20 most beloved^th artists of the century come into a new focus, or perhaps, startlingly, go out of focus, as a result of “Abstract Flash: Unseen Andrew Wyeth,” an exhibition of abstract watercolors never before shown at the Farnsworth Museum of Art in Rockland , ME. 8 Sep 2024. Farnsworth's presentation is drawn exclusively from the Andrew and Betsy Wyeth Collection of nearly 7,000 objects at the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, now managed by the Brandywine Museum of Art at Chadd's Ford, PA.

“Abstract Flash” debuted at Brandywine, with each presentation focusing on Wyeth's abstract watercolors produced at Chadds Ford, where Wyeth lived, or on the mid-coast of Maine, where he spent his summers.

Andrew Wyeth, watercolors, Chadds Ford and Maine, nothing revolutionary, but the nature of the works on display, well, that's another matter.

“The abstract watercolors that are the focus of 'Abstract Flash: Unseen Andrew Wyeth' have been a revelation to me and to many,” William L. Coleman, Wyeth Foundation Curator and Director of the Andrew Center for Studies & Betsy Wyeth at the Brandywine. Museum of Art, he told Forbes.com.

When Andrew Wyeth's wife, Betsy James Wyeth (1921–2020), died at age 98, her estate plan created a unique structure that went into effect in 2022. She stipulated that a definitive group of temps , Wyeth's watercolors, drawings and files he owned. from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art would be managed by the Brandywine Museum of Art in perpetuity. In addition, he wanted them to be shared with the public in exhibitions, as well as in regularly changing exhibits at the two museums with the deepest ties to the Wyeth family, Brandywine and Farnsworth.

Even in death, Betsy Wyeth was astutely guiding her husband's career as she had done in life.

Among the new material were abstract watercolors, hundreds of them, produced throughout his career from the 1930s to after 2000. This was not a phase, it was a practice. No title not seen Unknown outside the artist's immediate circle.

They challenge, if not obliterate, almost a century of categorization of Wyeth (1917–2009) as a realist painter: brilliant, if out of step with the avant-garde 20^th century Trends in modern art in America focusing on abstraction.

“The Andrew Wyeth we see in the works of 'Abstract Flash' was fascinated, not threatened, by challenging new ideas emerging from the New York art world during his lifetime,” Coleman said.

Either/Or, No Both/And

Andrew Wyeth once said, “My struggle is to preserve that abstract flash, like something you caught out of the corner of your eye.”

He often referred to himself as an abstract artist. He is known to have praised Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Hans Hoffman and especially Franz Klein, a book of which Wyeth kept in his study until his death.

But the art world didn't want to hear it. At 20^th century, institutions, scholars, and collectors demanded categorization and labeled Wyeth a realist; “Abstract Flash” represents the first exhibition to focus on Wyeth's interest in the abstract art of his contemporaries and the roots of his own practice in abstract methods.

It all seems a bit silly now, a wall separating realism from abstraction. This is how it was in the 1920s^th. colonies

“The fact that Wyeth found realistic painting useful when so many others had turned away from this mode has made it easy for scholars and art lovers alike to imagine a line of demarcation between the supposedly thoroughly modern art of the urban abstract artists and the supposedly traditional or conservative art of Andrew Wyeth is a fundamental problem for a version of our shared cultural history that is written primarily from the perspective of the New York City,” Coleman explained. It is rural, synonymous with passage and parochial in the viewpoint of Manhattanites. “As much as we are fascinated by Wyeth's work, even some of his most devoted admirers fall into the trap of placing him on a pedestal as opposed to the urban abstract painters beloved by critics in his lifetime” .

Anything urban is synonymous with progressive, modern, of vanguard to these same cultural luminaries. Wyeth and his work were not urban, but that did not make him a seed.

Blame the era.

“For many critics and urban tastemakers of the mid-20th century, the only legitimate artistic response to the horrors of the nuclear age was abstraction. Artists who continued to paint realistically could be misconstrued as purveyors of comfort food out of touch with the needs of the present,” Coleman continued. “This cause was urgent to some, and the critical rejection it entailed for Wyeth during a period of years must have been painful after enjoying the early acclaim of the temples of culture.”

Wyeth's admiration for abstraction would even see him at odds with America's greatest realist painter, Edward Hopper.

Andrew Wyeth vs. Edward Hopper

In addition to Wyeth's stunning abstract watercolors, “Abstract Flash” showcases rare archival documents showing his encounters with Abstract Expressionism and Geometric Abstraction, and a remarkable exchange of letters with Hopper, a giant – the giant?– of American realism. In 1960, Hopper spearheaded an effort to oppose a growing embrace of abstraction at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, the preeminent museum of American art.

Hopper asked Wyeth to join him and other realist painters in signing a letter addressing his concerns to the museum.

“This is one of my favorite parts of the exhibition. Edward Hopper, who was old enough to be Wyeth's father, is often seen as a fellow traveler in realism with Wyeth, and one could be forgiven for thinking they would have a similar perspective on abstraction,” said Coleman .” Conversely, when Hopper solicited a petition opposing the Whitneys' drift toward abstraction, Wyeth respectfully declined, saying, “It might be that realism has become belly from centuries of easy living?”

Ouch.

In addition to being dismissed for the rural emphasis of his artwork, Wyeth was perceived as much older than he actually was, old-fashioned, because of his realism. Painting realistically belonged to an earlier generation. The generation of his father, the famous illustrator NC Wyeth (1882-1945). Andrew, however, was in fact five years younger than Jackson Pollock. He didn't die until 2009.

“The Wyeth we find in 'Abstract Flash,' both through the artwork and the research ideas we share, is fully an artist of his time, fascinated by the work of Abstract Expressionist Franz Kline in particular , giving important early support to the geometric abstractionist Kenneth Noland, and moving away from the oppositional stance that some realist artists took in relation to abstraction,” Coleman said. “This Wyeth was not born in the wrong century, as the cliché would say, but rather he proposes an alternative modernism all by himself.”

Abstraction on its own terms. Not pure abstraction. The images of Pennsylvania are muddy, earthy, luminous, Wyeth-y; Maine's paintings are equally his and coastal, maritime, ships.

Observational abstraction perhaps.

“That abstract flash.”

“These abstract studies are where Wyeth's process begins, capturing an urgent idea in its raw geometry and coloration,” Coleman said. “We know to what extent the artist valued them from the cases where we can trace these powerful ideas to a work that his wife gave a title and put up for sale, but it would be a mistake to think that their importance end here These are intimate insights from a single eye into the work that reveal unexpected connections with contemporary abstract artists in his lifetime.”

Wyeth 24 hours a day

Year-round, the Brandywine Museum of Art has a remarkable collection of American art, most notably the three generations of Wyeth family artists whose work is always on view: NC, Andrew and Andrew's son Jamie (b. 1946). Like his father and grandfather, Jamie Wyeth divides his time between the Brandywine River Valley of Pennsylvania and Delaware and the midcoast of Maine.

Brandywine has exhibits related to Andrew and Jamie currently.

In addition, the Museum owns and makes open to the public seasonally three sites, all National Historic Sites, integral to their careers: NC Wyeth's home and studio; the Andrew Wyeth Studio (part of which Jamie Wyeth had his first studio); and the Kuerner farm.

The Farnsdale is almost as family-oriented with its own Wyeth Center, open seasonally from early July through the summer.

Even New York is getting in on the act. Schoelkopf Gallery in Tribeca presents “Enter Andrew Wyeth” June 28, 2024. 25 works on view from 1939, the year he met Betsy, to 1994. Pennsylvania, Maine, Portraits Watercolors For Sale , logs, barns, sailboats, as Wyeth does, even a bit of abstraction here and there.