November 29 -- art museum, Wyeth exhibit

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The Homewood Suites served hot breakfast every morning as part of staying in the hotel.  Over the weekend the Sunday Night Football bus was parked right outside the area in the lobby where we ate.

Lots of people posed for pics beside the bus.  Here is Mom (in the lower left corner), taking a pic of Dad and Sonny, all decked out in their Denver Broncos gear ("palette-knife"d for anonymity).

I walked over to the art museum, and took in the special exhibit on Andrew and Jamie Wyeth.  The audio tour came with the price of admission to the exhibit.  It was interesting, with lots of recorded description by both Andrew and Jamie.

Those Wyeths!  They surely knew/know how to paint!

Here is a portrait of Jamie, done by his father Andrew.

The brushwork!  The layers and layers and layers of very fine strokes...........  No shortcuts that I am aware of -- if a fur hat had 'leventy million hairs, the painting of same had 'leventy million brushstrokes.....

This one is by Jamie.  It's called "The Islander," and it was painted in 1976, when Jamie was 30.

One of the bits of recording from Jamie said something to the tune of he wasn't interested in painting something that he didn't find at least a little bit terrifying. 

(Call me shallow -- I like the pretty ones best.........  I don't really feel a need to be ... harrowed.)



I often notice things in art museums that I would have thought might not be in art museums.  Works on corrugated cardboard, say.  This one is a sketch, but there was also some of Jamie's finished work that was on corrugated cardboard.

This piece of cardboard is complete with a crease.

Jamie is a very reclusive person, but somehow he ended up in Andy Warhol's NYC art factory for a while.  He has painted several portraits of Warhol (including this one from 2015).

The glow around Andy's head is paint, not lighting.  I rather like this, behind the screen door.  (Not that I'd want to own it, but I can admire it in a museum.)  Three of Jamie's portraits of Andy were in this exhibit, and all of them included Andy's dachshund (I think named Angus).



The audio tour included a recording of Jamie saying that Warhol spent an hour getting ready before he went outside -- putting on makeup, putting on his eyebrows, and his hair........  It also said that Warhol thought Jamie was peculiar.  Hmmm.  Takes one to know one?

Jamie was recorded saying that he liked Andy's "deer in the headlights" look.  That Andy was perpetually surprised by what he saw going on around him.



Andrew also did close studies of people.  "Christina's World" is said to be his most famous painting.  The audio tour said he painted Christina and her brother many times, over many years.

In addition to close studies of people, both Andrew and Jamie have done close studies of animals.  The audio tour said that after Andrew spent many hours in the field with this bull, it would follow him around whenever he showed up.

Jamie painted "Lady" in 1968.

I was interested in the texture before I read the comment below.

This is the finished work on corrugated cardboard I mentioned before.  This is big.  Four feet by six, maybe?

"Archival cardboard."  Who knew it existed?  Not I!

Closeup -- we can see the corrugation.....

There was a video that showed Jamie working on "Inferno."  I thought it was very interesting to get a look at his process.

He used his fingers a lot.

He puts his brush in his mouth.  I hope the paint is non-toxic...............

Here is what he looked like after working on "Inferno" for the video.............

The audio tour said that Jamie sees all animals, whether gull or human, as having full sets of emotions.  (My words, which, I believe, are a correct rendition of his thought.)  He did a series of the seven deadly sins with gulls.......

As you might guess from Andy's screen door, Jamie sometimes works in 3D.  Small human figures, taxidermied birds, etc.  This display, and the next one, were in the wall between the paintings in the exhibit, and the little room where the "Inferno" video played.

The exhibit got creepier and creepier as we approached the end.

Ravens can be terrifying................

This image is an homage to Karin Jurick (whose blog I follow), who likes to paint people looking at paintings in museums.

I don't know what the bench is made of, but the top layer is thick felt.  It was rather more comfortable to sit on than it would have been, without the felt.



One last portrait by Jamie.  Rudolph Nureyev.  (Also on cardboard.)

As I wasn't taken by the creepier work, I'll finish with two works by Andrew, this one of which is creepy enough.  This pic of drying nets, which I liked for its depiction of the string the nets are made of (and the wind), "became a metaphysical representation of the soul of a young girl who washed out to sea."  Hmmm.  I liked it better before I read the description!

If there's anything creepy about this, I don't know it.  Thank goodness.  This is "Maga's Daughter."

I'm really glad I had a chance to see this exhibit, but as I walked out of it I thought "Now that was intense!"

Ok.  Taking a deep breath.  Admiring astonishing technique, and moving on to see things which were not inspired (at least in part) by terror.  Or creepiness.  Not that I know of, anyway...................

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