Thread: Wyeth Dynasty
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Unread 06-17-2017, 11:19 AM
Sharon Passmore Sharon Passmore is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Greenville, SC
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Default Wyeth Dynasty

I went to this exhibit:
http://gcma.org/andrew-wyeth/

It was fun! I have always been an N.C. Wyeth fan and I love Andrew too. They are vastly different animals, of course. It was interesting to see how each generation seemed to diverge from the previous but still having some relationship to what they were avoiding.

For example N.C. Wyeth illustrated fantasy, so of course his work is direct narrative, spelled out entirely and full of fanciful color, depicting different eras.

Andrew is full of ambiguity, both in the subject and in the environment. It's as though we are looking through a lens at the mysterious "subject" and everything else is vague. His color palette is entirely muted and everything is contemporary.

Then James does a flip flop on what his dad was doing. You see the same lens type experience but it is spots of the environment that are in focus and the people are part of the ambiguous areas. He is using bright color to define these focal points and the vague areas have a muted palette like Dad's.


I would say the time period depicted was not from any real era at all, but some place inside the imagination. In that way, you could see some influence from Grandpa.

Then, in some of Andrew's later work, you start to see pops of vibrant color. I think he started to be influenced by James, which is very cool.

Of course, the exhibit was very Andrew heavy. There were quite a few by James too. I was really wishing for more N.C. but there were only a few. There were some others pieces by Caroline and Henriette, Andrews sisters. Sadly, I was not too impressed with those. Caroline's pieces seemed over worked to me and Henriette had some interesting textures and brushwork, but they had no focus or life to them. This is all just my opinion though. I am no expert.
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