Remembering Andrew Wyeth
January 17th, 2009
American artist Andrew Wyeth died this week at the age of 91. His iconic painting “Christina’s World” was one of the best known artworks of the 20th century.
From the Museum of Modern Art catalog:
The woman crawling through the tawny grass was the artist’s neighbor in Maine, who, crippled by polio, “was limited physically but by no means spiritually.” Wyeth further explained, “The challenge to me was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless.”
From the New York Times obituary:
Wyeth had seen Christina Olson, crippled from the waist down, dragging herself across a Maine field, “like a crab on a New England shore,” he recalled. To him she was a model of dignity who refused to use a wheelchair and preferred to live in squalor rather than be beholden to anyone. It was dignity of a particularly dour, hardened, misanthropic sort, to which Wyeth throughout his career seemed to gravitate.
Special thanks to Johanna Mattern Allen for the tip.
(Graphic from Museum of Modern Art)
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