Appalled & Amazed

What is it about the somber landscapes and meticulously rendered portraits of Andrew Wyeth that makes them so phenomenally popular? The poetic magic of their realism, which not only equals but surpasses the photographic image, some feel. "It is Wyeth's feeling of loneliness that makes people respond--that feeling that exists in every human being at some time in his life," suggested one curator as Wyeth's 223-picture retrospective exhibition arrived at Manhattan's Whitney Museum last week.

Whatever the reason, loneliness is not exactly the sensation that the viewer is likely to experience at the thronged Wyeth show. In Philadelphia, where it opened last October, it drew 173,148 visitors in eight weeks, septupling the Academy's previous record. In Baltimore, where the show closed last month after a seven-week run, 85,430 visitors came to see it; thousands of others turned away only when they saw the lines outside. With seven weeks to go at the Whitney, and six at Chicago's Art Institute, Wyeth seems a cinch to beat the U.S. attendance record for a living artist, now held by Pablo Picasso, whose 75th-birthday showing at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art drew 328,206 visitors in 16 weeks in 1957.* Before the Whitney opening last week, Wyeth trekked up from his native Chadds Ford, Pa. (pop. 140), dressed in a pinstripe suit, and fielded the big-city critics' questions. What did he feel about op and pop? "Very exciting. It's today." Was his own art pertinent to the times? "I don't know. It's pertinent to me." Why did he paint nature scenes all the time? "I was born in the country," he explained patiently. "I have always lived in the country."

"Actually," he continued later, "I don't paint cows because they are cows. You have to go under that surface quality. I'm not sure people would go for me if I were a pure realist." And his present popularity? "I'm just appalled and amazed at the way in which people are interested in my paintings. I think it's because I happen to paint things that reflect the basic truths of life: sky, earth, friends, the intimate things. People are drawn to my work by common feelings that go beyond art."

* Alltime record holder: Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, whose smile drew 1,077,521 visitors to Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum during 26 days in 1963.

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