There is a gush of obituaries out. Wyeth was one of those artists for whom there was a real gap during his lifetime between public appreciation for his work (high) and critical opinion of those same works (low). True, "Christina's World" is in the Musuem of Modern Art. And the Metropolitan held a major show of his under the leadership of controversial former director Thomas Hoving. But neither move had much of a sanctifying effect. The exposure and popularity of "Christina's World" at the MOMA only demonstrates for its critics its status as museum boilerplate.
The obits are focusing heavily on this disjunction between general and critical popularity.
Most defenders hint at the bones of abstraction in his watercolors or in his empty sweeps of space.
It seems that Wyeth's death is going to be a thrashing ground for a lot of dead horses - debates on modernism, marketing, critical vs. popular taste etc. For my part, it doesn't really concern me whether or not Wyeth will ever fit one of the numerous evolutionary progressions, technical or conceptual, that serve as rubrics for criticism. Neither do I think it matters to the work itself that some by fault of popularity have been consigned to a Hallmark hell. Art of any kind asks a viewer to stand in front and try and make a case for it. Wyeth repays that effort. His work is technically proficient, displays a great eye for composition, and is at its best evocative and moving. One critic paired Andrew Wyeth with Andy Warhol as the two most well known American artists of the age. Of course Warhol enjoyed/enjoys a much higher critical reputation than Wyeth. I'd take Wyeth easily on those terms.
New York Times obit and
evaluation
The Times obit and evaluation
The Wall Street Journal
NPR
The Village Voice
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