Word: art
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Andrew Wyeth, who died today at 91 at his home in Chadds Ford, Pa., was the great problem of American modern art. He was a problem first because he so completely refused to be modern in any terms that the art world cared about or could stomach. Long after it was no longer fashionable or even permissible to practice a flinty, granular realism, Wyeth went on making pictures with the kind of brushwork that specified the world in almost molecular detail. That his technical capabilities were so apparent only made it more annoying to some critics that he wouldn...
...worst of all was his popularity, which for much of his life was enormous. Until the other Andy came along - Andy Warhol - Wyeth and Norman Rockwell were without doubt the two most widely recognized names in American art. Wyeth's museum shows were blockbusters and his sale prices strong, especially after the Japanese discovered him in the 1980s...
...Even when Wyeth is admitted into the canon, he's held a bit at arm's length. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City owns his most famous canvas, Christina's World, which it acquired in 1948, soon after it was painted, for just $1,800. But while the picture is always on display at MoMA, it's consigned to what you might call an anteroom on the margins of the more respectably modern galleries, a salon des refuses that it shares with Edward Hopper's House by the Railroad. Seeing Christina splayed across her field of grass...
...January is national tea month. To celebrate, peruse Tea Culture of Japan: Chanoyu Past and Present at the Yale University Art Gallery. Brought to Japan from China in the 9th century, it took a few hundred years for tea to catch on, but by the 1500s it was all the rage in Japan to have tea masters prepare powdered tea in elaborately choreographed ceremonies. About 100 objects, including kettles, bamboo tea scoops and ceramic tea bowls are on display through April 26. 1111 Chapel Street, at York Street, New Haven...
...ready to defend with his bulging forearms and fists, Popeye was a model of self-reliance. But now the irascible cartoon character's identity has become embroiled in a long-running transatlantic controversy over a question he might have answered with a spinach-fueled punch: Who owns art...