WHY OH WHY OH WYETH

AN APPRECIATIVE OBIT
The death of American Artist, Andrew Wyeth, the other day briefly revived the old argument as to whether he was a proper artist, or 'merely' an illustrator. In every obit I read about him, the subject seemed to be the central issue on which his whole career pivoted. I'm sure the art world elite will get a few party-miles out of slagging off the old guy anew, but I'd bet my boots they would just love to own one of his pictures, no matter how unfashionable, simply for the profit they'd make, seeing as the flow of product has been shut off, so to speak.
Art patrons - for the most part - are indistinguishable from fashonistas in the sense that it's all about image and being thought of by their peers as the last word in modernity. Standing above and apart from the prolotariat is all in that rarefied world. Nothing new there. Art critics travel in the same circles and therefore, absorb the self-absorption of the absorbed. Wyeth managed, over a long career, to give art critics fits because he was both common and extraordinary. I fantasize that he must have had a good, cosmic chuckle at the way his paintings divided opinion among the elite. They say he was calculating, crass and commercial (insert your own insidious comparison with his community of 'peers' here) and anybody who created pictures that, in endless reproductions, wallpapered many a college dorm, simply could not be credible. But the art elite are a fickle lot, and they cannot stand anyone who becomes successful without their seal of approval. I don't know a great deal about Mr. Wyeth, or what he thought, but I rather think he could have cared less. He succeeded anyway. Being critic-proof is anathema to a critic.
I liked a lot of Wyeth's work. His was a pale, stark and ponderous view, but I never considered him anything but one of America's finest painters. He had the freedom to pursue art in his own fashion and became monumentally unique operating within a rather narrow stylistic universe.
But so what? A darling of the art world, Jeff Koons is all over the place, and it's all crap. (Talk about crass!) Yet I believe Wyeth's world will endure, long after Koons' porcelain monstrosities have become worthless risible tat. (I know that currently, it's expensive risible tat, but that's a matter for the accountants.) 'Real' artists and critics will continue to piss on Wyeth from a great height, but his work was solid and real and wonderful, and his individuality, more than anything else, was mighty inspiring to a proletariat like me.