Jamie Wyeth: Seven Deadly Sins
Jamie Wyeth Recent Works
March 14 – April 18, 2008
Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946)
Sloth (Seven Deadly Sins), 2007
Combined mediums on hand-wove, toned paper mounted on archival board
34 1/2 x 24 1/4 inches
Signed lower right: J. Wyeth
ADELSON GALLERIES IN NEW YORK Presents- EVOCATIVE, STARKLY ORIGINAL PAINTINGS TO BE EXHIBITED IN SEVEN DEADLY SINS: THE RECENT WORK of JAMIE WYETH
"In painting, much like in music, you have to practice. It certainly isn't all inspiring…. Once in a while, things really click, and that's the opiate…. That's why you paint, I think." –Jamie Wyeth
New York, NY (Winter, 2008)—For more than 40 years, Jamie Wyeth (b. 1946) has attracted attention with his paintings of subjects and places that have mesmerized him: life on his Pennsylvania farm; the surroundings of his island home in Maine; the scene around Andy Warhol's Factory in New York City and elsewhere. Since 2005, Wyeth has been at work interpreting, among other subjects, time-honored biblical tradition, and the results will be seen in Seven Deadly Sins: The Recent Work of Jamie Wyeth, an exhibition and sale of approximately 30 new works, to be on view from March 14 – April 18, 2008, at Adelson Galleries in New York City. As an ensemble, these works create a portrait of the artist today and tap into our culture—with all its frailties and moral ambiguities—in an inescapably uneasy manner.
"Jamie combines an edgy realism and a sense of place with an overarching moral tone that is at once ambiguous and haunting," said Warren Adelson, president of Adelson Galleries.
In the series of works that comprise The Seven Deadly Sins, as in many of his paintings, the artist uses seagulls to represent the human condition. Of these birds he has said, "What I love about gulls is what most people dislike about gulls: I love the fact that they're scavengers, they're garbage pickers, they're pirates…. Living on this island, I'm able to completely tune into them." In these chilling and graphic works, for instance, we see two birds with beaks open in screams of Anger¸ another bird's distended throat as it tries to consume a fish in Gluttony and a grisly spectacle of birds swarming carrion while the foreground bird is sedentary in Sloth.
Inferno¸ the largest painting in the exhibition (60 x 80 inches), a work on cardboard completed in 2006, depicts an invasion of gulls swarming around burning trash—a scene that seems at odds with the fresh coastal scene—while a local Maine boy stokes the blaze, seemingly unaffected by the attack all around him that appears straight out of a Hitchcock film. As Warren Adelson comments in his introduction to the exhibition catalogue, "it is a curious and unexpected vision of Maine: savage birds, polluting smoke and roaring fire." (In the exhibition, this work will be accompanied by a video of the artist painting it, which is a rare opportunity for the viewer to see Wyeth's process of bold brushwork and other varied techniques he employs.)
Another highlighted work in Seven Deadly Sins: The Recent Work of Jamie Wyeth is Fred Hughes and Andy Warhol, 2005. This oil on canvas is an homage to the artist, who Wyeth first met in the 1960s (Jamie was one of only two painters working at The Factory beside Warhol; Jean-Michel Basquiat was the other). Also depicted in the painting is Fred Hughes, Warhol's business manager and constant companion, and the result is a portrayal of two iconic figures who defined the art scene in their heyday. The canvas is a ghostly evocation of Warhol, who—clutching his ever-present tape recorder—is seated beneath the unlikely moose head that hung prominently in the Factory. Beside him, Hughes, stands stylish and poised. Although both are gone, they come alive in this tribute.
A celebrated contemporary realist painter, Jamie Wyeth is also a third-generation artist and member of the famed American artistic dynasty. Though many of his works reflect the eternal beauty of the Maine landscape or the enduring dignity of domestic animals and wildlife, others are intensely of their time, depicting important individuals and cultural events in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Included among these are portraits of political and entertainment figures, including President John F. Kennedy, Rudolf Nureyev, Andy Warhol, and Arnold Schwarzenegger; charcoal drawings that documented the unfolding drama of the Senate Watergate hearings; pictorial reporting of NASA space launches and splashdowns; and imaginative pictures for contemporary novelist Stephen King's ABC-TV miniseries Kingdom Hospital, to name a few. Born in Wilmington, Delaware (near his family home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania), Wyeth spends a substantial portion of his time on the Maine coast, where the landscape and local inhabitants—animal and human—serve as subjects for his work. He paints primarily in oil and watercolor, having never developed an affinity for the egg tempera medium favored by his father. With their compelling images, strong contrasts, and tactile surfaces, Jamie Wyeth's works are marked with a portrait-like intensity, whether they depict people, animals, architecture, objects, or the continually unfolding interaction between mankind and nature.
Adelson Galleries is known for its expertise in American art and has made significant contributions to its study through critically acclaimed loan exhibitions and accompanying publications, including Frederic Edwin Church: Romantic Landscapes and Seascapes (2008), Sargent's Venice (2007), Andrew Wyeth: Helga on Paper (2007), Art in a Mirror: The Counterproofs of Mary Cassatt (2004-2005), Sargent's Women (2003), Maurice Prendergast: Paintings of America (2003), From the Artist's Studio: Unknown Prints and Drawings by Mary Cassatt (2000), Childe Hassam: An American Impressionist (1999) and Sargent Abroad: Figures and Landscapes (1997).