Andrew Wyeth: "I worked and worked and worked on just the field, that swell, that curve to the field." "It's like building a house, and then living in it." "I built the ground." "Thinking of her... and then when I put it, it was right." "That pink, like faded lobster shells that you find on the shore there." Andrew Wyeth was 31 when he made "Christina's World" in Cushing, Maine, and it's become one of the most recognizable American paintings of the 20th century. There is, unquestionably, a great power in it, and it's a power that is more accessible to the average person than some of the prevailing experimentation of that period. At least it is for me. And that doesn't mean that it's any better or worse than a painting by say, Jackson Pollock from the same year. only that being realistic and dramatic, "Christina's World" more easily fits the shape of our memories, our dreams, our fears and cravings. In other words, it resembles a story. Okay. So what's the story Andrew Wyeth wants to tell with this painting? What we can see is a woman lying in a field, looking up a gently sloping hill to a house and barn in the distance. The composition is elegantly designed. The first thing you notice is the woman. Her shape and her gaze draw you diagonally across the canvas to the home in the upper right. From there, your eyes slip down the hill top to the barn, then to the boundary where the tall grass meets the short, which curves forward and back down, dropping you off at the woman again. This constant movement from foreground to background intensifies the three dimensionality of the painting already felt in the careful work Wyeth puts into the swell and curve of the field. Beyond this, there is a perfect asymmetrical balance between the woman and the shapes in the top third of the canvas. These are design features that communicate a feeling of serenity immediately without us even knowing why at first, like a bass note that's too low to hear, but influences our experience nonetheless. And yet, as we begin to look closer at "Christina's World," a few things start to work against this column. For example, the colors, as in many of Wyeth's paintings, are muted, reflecting the particular austerity of New England landscapes, a common image in early American art and thought. Even the woman's dress, which is the most striking color on the canvas, is a subdued pink. "Like faded lobster shells," as Wyeth describes it. The next thing that stands out is the woman's posture. Especially her thin and contorted arms. The way her hands grip the earth with a kind of nervous energy. They are the only hint of what might be going on in her head. You know, facing her away from the viewer, creates an absence that, in our interpretation of the scene of the story, we're desperate to fill. So we put ourselves in her place. But that doesn't quite dispel the feeling of inscrutability, of not knowing that charges the painting with tension. There is more we can know about the woman in Christina's world if we want to. Christina is, after all, a real person. Anna Christina Olsen, who lived in the house from the painting with her brother, Alvaro. Olsen suffered from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a neuromuscular disorder that robbed her of the use of her legs. She refused to use a wheelchair however, preferring to crawl using the strength of her arms. "I saw her crawling out to a little, uh, truck guard that she had next to the house one day and uh, it dawned on me." "And I went home that night. I remember there was a small party at... being given at the James's house" "and I remember in the middle of party I rushed out into a room in the studio that I had painted in and kept my material" "and made a quick notation of society of Christine. The field. The house in the background." Olsen was 55 at the time of the painting, but if the figure and that pink dress looks more youthful, that's because Wyeth used his wife Betsy for a model of Christina's torso. Only the arms betray her real condition. To Wyeth, Christina's world wasn't the portrait of someone at just one point in time. It was a painting of Christina's whole life, her weakness but also her strength and vitality and, above all, the deep lifelong connection she had to this old family house in Maine and the land surrounding it. You know, by painting a symbolic representation of that connection, by setting it in perpetual motion with his composition, by laboring for weeks and weeks on the grass and the shape of the field, Wyeth, I think was looking for a secret in nature. His work descends from the tradition of Emerson and Thoreau, who found in the natural world the basis for a new American philosophy. Emerson writes in his essay, Nature, "Crossing a bare common in snow puddles at twilight..." "under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune," "I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear." "I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all." "I often feel if I could only be... not there to paint," "just a pair of eyes, would be so marvelous." "If you could just, I could just do something and disappear and just... it'd be terrific." In his painting, Andrew Wyeth becomes Emerson's transparent eyeball. He sees in the nature around him, even in the barren landscapes of New England, something profoundly real. As an artist, he helps us to see it too, and it's a reminder, frankly, I need. Living in a city. Living online. It's easy to go about your day and see nothing at all. Now getting back in touch with nature isn't a promise of happiness, as the tensions in Christina's world are careful to show. But there is, I think, a piece of us in the land, in the trees, in the sky, and a sense of wholeness waits for us when we can remember not to forget it. "I was there at the right moment." "Imagine if I hadn't been there." "But you see how important it is to be in the surrounding and breathe it?" "And then it happens. If you're lucky, and you're perceptive enough to catch it." Hey everybody, thank you so much for watching. This episode was brought to you by Squarespace. If you don't know, you can use Squarespace to make beautiful websites for anything you might need. A personal site, a wedding website, a site for your business or portfolio. And in just a few clicks, you could have that website up and running. Their design team has crafted really amazing templates that work on computer browsers and on mobile, switching perfectly between the two. 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Interesting the story behind it and the way the video describes the painting as giving off a feeling of tranquility and homeliness. I get nothing but dread from it. Her posture on the ground and the dark house looming over gives me the sense of oppression and fear.