Wyeth: Magic and Poetry

Tell All The Truth

 

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,

Success in circuit lies,

Too bright for our infirm delight

The truth's superb surprise;  

As lightning to the children eased

With explanation kind,

The truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind.

 

 

Real beauty in eight lines by Emily Dickinson, and a message to all would-be poets.  And, as in poetry in art. Andrew Wyeth’s famous painting ‘Christina’s World’ has, perhaps, been reproduced once too often, but it has what makes the magic: a suggestion or more, and the space for the viewer to go in search of it.

Similarly, Snow Hill, in which subjects from a lifetime’s painting dance around a maypole on a page-white landscape; the landscape Wyeth lived and painted in. But is this a gently tongue in cheek retrospective of his paintings, a magical counterpoint of a May scene in deep winter, or a poignant reflection on the lives he shared and painted over the course of his life?