Perhaps his most famous work is 1948’s Christina’s World. The painting was inspired by his neighbor, Christina Olson, who was disabled by polio (though the body in the painting is a composite of women—we will not get into the meta-qualities of the painting here, though).
If Wyeth is to be taken at his word, he certainly intended to show Olson as a sympathetic and inspiring subject. He described her as someone who "was limited physically but by no means spiritually." He said of the artistic process, "The challenge to me was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless." [1]
Admirable sentiments, perhaps, but there has always been something troubling about the painting for me. When I saw it for the first time as a child, I immediately felt an aversion to it. There was something about it that I responded negatively to. I believe it was the voyeuristic sensibility that saw in the piece (though I did not know to apply that label to it at the time). It felt to me as though we, the viewers, were watching the woman in a private moment, and that somehow felt wrong because she was disabled. At that time, I did not like people to watch me struggle with various simple tasks, like tying my shoelaces, and I perhaps projected my own dread onto her.
Perhaps I was also frightened by the bleakness of the landscape. The field is barren, the grass seems hard and dry (at least in the tiny reproductions, which were all I’d seen of the painting until three years ago), the sky seems to harboring a storm, and the buildings seem deserted. In this landscape I sensed a barrenness of life, of the life of the disabled woman, and of myself. She seemed alone to me, and I knew myself to be so.
Finally, and to my shame, I think I was a little afraid of her. People with disabilities are not immune to normate sensibilities, and it is often easier to fear what one is than to fear what one is not. The woman in the painting seems alien, Other. We do not see her face, and her frail arms and grasping hand suggest a terrible longing that will never be fulfilled. The figure is reaching away from us, but she is somehow reaching toward us as well, and that is what is frightening.
Now that I am older, I see the painting in a different light. I had always remembered the figure being further away and therefore more alien, but in reality she appears only a few feet ahead of us. If she were far away, we might feel we were watching the freak from the tree line, but her proximity to us suggests instead that we are with her; perhaps she is leading us to her home, where she will offer us tea and cookies. The landscape is still foreboding, but there is light on her body—perhaps too much light. It contrasts with her dark surroundings; it imbues her with vitality. Her arms appear wiry now, rather than frail; there is an energy in her reaching arm; the wisps of hair that fly about her head are not blown by the wind of an impending storm, but rather from her forward motion.
The beauty of the painting is not that it is “inspiring”; it is that it can cause feelings of peace and of dread, sometimes at the same time. One would think that a painting with so much richness, so much depth, and such that can inspire such dichotomous readings could only be painted by a real artist. Rest in peace, Andrew Wyeth.
Admirable sentiments, perhaps, but there has always been something troubling about the painting for me. When I saw it for the first time as a child, I immediately felt an aversion to it. There was something about it that I responded negatively to. I believe it was the voyeuristic sensibility that saw in the piece (though I did not know to apply that label to it at the time). It felt to me as though we, the viewers, were watching the woman in a private moment, and that somehow felt wrong because she was disabled. At that time, I did not like people to watch me struggle with various simple tasks, like tying my shoelaces, and I perhaps projected my own dread onto her.
Perhaps I was also frightened by the bleakness of the landscape. The field is barren, the grass seems hard and dry (at least in the tiny reproductions, which were all I’d seen of the painting until three years ago), the sky seems to harboring a storm, and the buildings seem deserted. In this landscape I sensed a barrenness of life, of the life of the disabled woman, and of myself. She seemed alone to me, and I knew myself to be so.
Finally, and to my shame, I think I was a little afraid of her. People with disabilities are not immune to normate sensibilities, and it is often easier to fear what one is than to fear what one is not. The woman in the painting seems alien, Other. We do not see her face, and her frail arms and grasping hand suggest a terrible longing that will never be fulfilled. The figure is reaching away from us, but she is somehow reaching toward us as well, and that is what is frightening.
Now that I am older, I see the painting in a different light. I had always remembered the figure being further away and therefore more alien, but in reality she appears only a few feet ahead of us. If she were far away, we might feel we were watching the freak from the tree line, but her proximity to us suggests instead that we are with her; perhaps she is leading us to her home, where she will offer us tea and cookies. The landscape is still foreboding, but there is light on her body—perhaps too much light. It contrasts with her dark surroundings; it imbues her with vitality. Her arms appear wiry now, rather than frail; there is an energy in her reaching arm; the wisps of hair that fly about her head are not blown by the wind of an impending storm, but rather from her forward motion.
The beauty of the painting is not that it is “inspiring”; it is that it can cause feelings of peace and of dread, sometimes at the same time. One would think that a painting with so much richness, so much depth, and such that can inspire such dichotomous readings could only be painted by a real artist. Rest in peace, Andrew Wyeth.
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