SEA NOTES

Beyond the Story
The Spirit in Art

 PH-247, 1951, Big Blue, Oil on Canvas Clifford Still

Writing last month’s Sea Notes, A Study in Blue, reminded me of a business trip to the Clifford Stills Museum in Denver. I had time to kill between installations, so I took advantage of the free moment and wandered around the museum. I found the architecture quite fascinating, but as I went through the galleries, I came across a painting that struck me emotionally. Nicknamed ‘Big Blue,’ the image, PH-247, 1951, is significant, 117 x 92 inches, predominantly blue with a black strip and a tiny sliver of orange running down the middle of the canvas. I was taken aback by the encompassing nature of the artwork; many emotions were pulsing through my brain and body. The curator who was with me noticed that the painting had resonated with me. She informed me that this painting had brought tears to people’s eyes. 
   It is a simple, abstract painting with luscious brushstrokes that dance around the canvas like waves in the ocean, only to be interrupted by the stripes running down the center. Those two strips that break up the space create tension within the work, which would be absent if the canvas was just a giant panel of blue. What about this painting makes sense of emotional unbalance, one that stirs feelings and qualities that can’t be explained? Viewing a representational work assumes that the subject matter is responsible for the evoked emotions. Considering this painting by Clifford Stills and abstract works by other artists that produce the same feelings, it becomes apparent that it is more than just the picture; it is an essence that goes beyond the story.

Noon Hour, 1942. Watercolor on Paper, Andrew Wyeth

The artist's feelings and emotional reactions to the subject become more critical than mere observation of the topic itself. The abstract part of the painting speaks to the viewer at an almost subliminal level, the quality of the medium and how it is applied become one with the subject. In viewing paintings, a presence can be established, the artist's spirit, an expression of sensation. There are two ways that spirituality can be depicted in the arts; one is the objective, expressing religion's ideas through signs, symbols, and storytelling. The second spiritual in the arts is the subjective, the artist's soul, a search through painting for a truth. It goes beyond the notion that we believe only what we can see.
   Andrew Wyeth is known for his tight, representational, and detailed egg tempera paintings, but his early watercolors were very loose, colorful, and bordering on the abstract. They are paintings charged with energy and a life that dances off the paper. Wyeth was active during the emergence and domination of abstract art; the art world was going against the history of art and its objective representation of our world. Critics did not like Andrew Wyeth and would write articles explaining that the art world of Andrew Wyeth was over and that the expression of the spirit in painting can only be understood with non-representational art. Ironically, many of Andrew's paintings have a borderline abstract quality.

Maine Coast Interlude, 1940. Watercolor on Paper, Andrew Wyeth

A watercolor painted in 1940, Maine Coast Interlude, shows a fisherman on a beach getting ready to head out to sea. It is a very lively, dynamic painting that exudes Andrew Wyeth, like the song of a bird. His style is evident throughout the work, and his personality and spirit are expressed in every brush stroke. The story is told through representational objects; the viewer can read the symbols and understand the theme being relayed. The spirit of the painting, the essence of Andrew Wyeth, is told through the abstract nature of the paint application. The foreground of the painting can be directly compared to Wassily Kandinsky in its abstraction of beach scrub.

Maine Coast Interlude, 1940, detail. Watercolor on Paper, Andrew Wyeth

Untitled, 1921,  Watercolor on Paper, Wassily Kandinsky

It is not necessarily about the color or the intent of using an abstraction that can play into the spiritual essence of a work of art. Andrew’s later egg tempera was very monochromatic and parched, yet screamed emotion; he could reinterpret a visual reality through sensations and feelings. The painting Northern Point, 1950, is a good example. Andrew Wyeth was after understanding and representing the structure of objects, but somewhere outside of time or capturing a specific moment. There is a sense of isolation and abandonment; halfway up the lighting rod is a glass orb that, when struck by lightning, would shatter, letting people know that lightning had struck—a symbol of the fragility of life. 

Northern Point, 1950. Egg Tempera on Panel, Andrew Wyeth

Within this depiction of fragility is also an examination of the resilience of human nature confronted by the forces of nature. Wyeth clearly thought out how to use the paints and brushes to depict the texture of the roof shingles. They are weather-beaten, soaked in the salt air, and matured by the sun.  These shingles have withstood the passage of time and have weathered many storms, persevering against the onslaught of nature. There is a tension created by the shingles and the lightning rod that speaks of this resiliency, the shadow that is cast by the globe, with the glowing color, also shows the soul and spirit. 

Northern Point, detail, 1905. Egg Tempera on Panel, Andrew Wyeth

When closely analyzing the painting technique, certain aspects of the artwork are astonishingly abstract and minimalist in representation. The blades of grass in the field in front of the house that was painted, and in a subtractive technique, scratched out when viewed in isolation, are non-representational. They are seemingly random strokes but exude the character of a field of seagrass. So, the two types of artistic expression are married together to form the whole. The objective representation, the intense observation, and adherence to detail that tell the story of isolation, fragility, and also the strength of character, coupled with the subjective, abstract parts, mesh to fully present an artwork that speaks visually to the mind and emotionally through its abstract quality so that we can feel beyond the story.