[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 16 (Tuesday, January 27, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S946-S947]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   HONORING THE LIFE OF ANDREW WYETH

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed 
to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 23, submitted earlier today 
by Senator Casey.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution by title.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A resolution (S. Res. 23) honoring the life of Andrew 
     Wyeth.

  There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the 
resolution.
  Ms. SNOWE. Mr. President, I rise as a cosponsor of Senator Specter's 
resolution honoring Andrew Wyeth and to pay tribute to the landmark 
life and legacy of this towering giant of American Art. My State of 
Maine joins Pennsylvania, the Nation, and the world in mourning the 
inexpressible loss of Andrew Wyeth, a painter of enormous genius, brave 
vision, and unmatched realism who long ago secured a rightful and 
prominent place in the pantheon of artists.
  One of the most `American' of painters, Andrew Wyeth possessed a 
courage and sensitivity to capture the stark beauty of the landscapes 
and individuals he depicted. And those of us from Maine will forever 
hold a special place in our hearts for the undeniable love he had for 
our State, as portrayed in his moving landscapes of Maine's coasts and 
especially in his exceptional ``Christina's World.'' Like millions 
around the world, we will miss Andrew Wyeth's historic and enduring 
contributions to the American story as told on canvas as well as his 
powerful capacity for capturing the human condition unvarnished.
  On a personal note, it was such a privilege to know Andy and his 
wonderful wife, Betsy, over the years. I will always treasure the fond 
memories of visiting Andy and Betsy and their family at their home on 
Allen Island. Indisputably, Andy lived his life the way he painted--
with integrity, grace, and an abiding sense of humanity. And I always 
remember the pride and honor I felt attending the presentation of a 
National Medal of the Arts in 2007 to Andy at the White House in an 
unforgettable ceremony rightly recognizing his iconic body of work over 
an extraordinary lifetime.
  I would like to include for the Record a recent outstanding article 
entitled Wyeth's White Wonder by John Wilmerding, published in The Wall 
Street Journal, Saturday, January 24, 2009. Formerly a professor at 
Dartmouth College, Mr. Wilmerding curated the exhibition Andrew Wyeth: 
The Helga Pictures at the National Gallery of Art in 1987 and recently 
retired as Sarofim Professor of American Art at Princeton University. 
Describing Andrew Wyeth's Snow Hill as one of his most memorable works, 
Mr. Wilmerding captures the essence of the painting and the painter, 
calling Snow Hill ``one of the most haunting, beautiful and resonant of 
Wyeth's seven-decade career.''
  Poet Robert Frost once wrote of a star that ``it asks a little of us 
here/It asks of us a certain height,'' and certainly the same can be 
said of Andrew Wyeth who inspired and entreated us to experience his 
courageous rendering of the world as he saw it, and like generations to 
come, we are eternally indebted to him. Andrew Wyeth's artistic 
achievements resonate not only in our time--but for all time. He will 
be profoundly missed, and we extend our deepest condolences to Betsy 
and to our great friends--their son, Jamie and his wife, Phyllis--their 
son, Nicholas; and the entire Wyeth family for their tremendous loss.
  I ask unanimous consent the article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

[[Page S947]]

            [From the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 24-25, 2009]

                          Wyeth's White Wonder

                          (By John Wilmerding)

       Andrew Wyeth died last week on a winter's day familiar to 
     us from many of his paintings: snowy, cold and moody. Perhaps 
     the best form of appreciation we can express for his artistic 
     achievement is to undertake a close look at one of his iconic 
     works in this case ``Snow Hill,'' a painting from the height 
     of his powers that is relatively little known, seen or 
     reproduced. While it has been on loan to the Brandywine 
     Museum (www.brandywine-museum.org) for several years, its 
     fragility of surface has kept it from going out on loan to a 
     wider audience, and its singularity of subject matter has not 
     readily found it a place in recent Wyeth monographs or 
     exhibition catalogs. Only posterity is likely to sort out 
     which of his paintings will stand up as his most memorable 
     works, but ``Snow Hill'' is likely to hold its own as one of 
     the most haunting, beautiful and resonant of Wyeth's seven-
     decade career.
       Indeed, the picture is about marking seven decades. Wyeth, 
     who lived to the age of 91, painted this large tempera to 
     mark his 70th birthday (in 1987). He finished the painstaking 
     effort two years later. There are few others that are larger 
     and as ambitious. The artist was conscious of mortality for 
     much of his career, from the deaths of his father and nephew 
     in a train accident in 1945, to his own miscellaneous 
     ailments, operations and illnesses throughout his later 
     years.
       We know that many of his images were in varying degrees 
     autobiographical, and this painting was a conscious summary 
     of his artistic life that was both somber memoir and playful 
     recalibraion. Like many of Wyeth's winter landscapes in 
     watercolor, dry-brush, or egg tempera, this makes the most of 
     a near-monochromatic palette, where darks and lights play 
     against each other, and nature's full range of grays and tans 
     takes on a heightened texture. One of his great talents was 
     an intense technical virtuosity in all of his chosen media. 
     Yet even as his admirers and critics are drawn to the magic 
     realism of objects and surfaces, it is the charged emotion, 
     suggestive meaning, and complex moods beneath facades and 
     faces that distinguish his finest visions.
       The setting was intimately familiar to Wyeth almost his 
     entire life, a view looking down over the Kuerner farm and 
     the nearby hills of the Brandywine Valley in Pennsylvania. 
     The artist knew almost every inch of the roads, buildings and 
     fields we see in the distance below. Historians and others 
     may argue for some time whether his future reputation will 
     rest on the landscapes or portraits (respectively descended 
     from two of his artistic idols, Winslow Homer and Thomas 
     Eakins). ``Snow Hill'' is unusual in the merging of the two--
     one open, silent and vast; the other intimate, animate and 
     active. The foreground hilltop, receding valley, and broad 
     sky constitute a painted tour de force of whites, off-whites 
     and cream colors. Its poetic emptiness recalls the stark 
     eloquence seen in but a few of Wyeth's other strongest 
     compositions--such as ``Christina's World'' (1949), ``River 
     Cove'' (1958) and ``Airborne'' (1996).
       Atop the hillside we view the improbable scene of a Maypole 
     dance at Christmas time. The seven ribbons descending from 
     beneath the tree above mark the artist's seven decades. In a 
     surreal vision, Wyeth assembles prominent figures from his 
     life and art who appeared in major paintings over the years. 
     Holding hands from left to right across the foreground are 
     Karl and Anna Kuerner, followed by William Loper and Helga 
     Testorf. In the back right is the family friend and neighbor 
     Allan Lynch, wearing his telltale hat with earflaps flying, 
     and finally, partially obscured, a figure with billowing 
     brown coat who recalls the artist's wife, Betsy, posing years 
     earlier in the snowy courtyard of their Chadd's Ford 
     farmhouse. In this enumeration we realize the group only 
     comes to six, suggesting a missing seventh figure. Possibly 
     Christina Olson, the most enduring of Wyeth's Maine subjects, 
     made famous by his first masterpiece, ``Christina's World,'' 
     is not present, since her paralysis would keep her from 
     dancing. Or perhaps the implied seventh individual might be 
     the artist himself, participant in their lives and unseen 
     orchestrator of this imaginary get-together. In any case, 
     this is a witty and exuberant conjuring of artistic 
     imagination.
       Not surprisingly for Wyeth, however, there are notes of 
     darkness beneath the celebratory gathering: Wyeth had lived 
     through Karl Kuerner succumbing to cancer, Allan Lynch to 
     suicide, and William Loper to madness. Even so, what we 
     ultimately experience here is the enjoyment of art, life and 
     creativity, an idea subtly but vividly conveyed by the air-
     touched ribbons. They contain the most intense colors and 
     free-flowing brushstrokes in this picture. Wyeth once 
     described how he approached their execution. In part 
     remembering his childhood games with friends, dressing up as 
     soldiers or medieval knights with play swords or sabers, he 
     envisioned here addressing the painting like a fencer with an 
     epee. With arm and brush extended, he swiftly moved to the 
     surface and slashed each stroke of color from the apex down 
     to the figures.
       There is one more level of meaning embodied in this half-
     real, half-dream image, which resides in its title. ``Snow 
     Hill'' is at once a literal description and a literary 
     allusion. Yes, our vantage point is on the crown of this 
     snowy hill, gently curving across the foreground. But its 
     contour also brings to mind the great rounded back of a white 
     whale, which Wyeth connected to ``Moby-Dick.'' His painting's 
     title comes from a line toward the end of Melville's book. In 
     chapter 133, ``The Chase--First Day,'' a sailor aloft cries, 
     ``there she blows!--there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! 
     It is Moby Dick!'' This of course reinforces Wyeth's own 
     juxtapositions of black and white, darkness and light, death 
     and life. His ``Snow Hill'' is a more personal drama than 
     Melville's, but no less a celebration of whiteness, in 
     symbolism and pigment.

  Mr. DURBIN. I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the 
preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the 
table, with no intervening action or debate, and any statements be 
printed in the Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The resolution (S. Res 23) was agreed to.
  The preamble was agreed to.
  The resolution, with its preamble, reads as follows:

                               S. Res. 23

       Whereas Andrew Wyeth was one of the most popular American 
     artists of the twentieth century, whose paintings presented 
     to the world his impressions of rural American landscapes and 
     lives;
       Whereas Andrew Wyeth was born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania 
     on July 12, 1917, where he spent much of his life and where 
     today stands the Brandywine River Museum, a museum dedicated 
     to the works of the Wyeth family;
       Whereas Andrew Wyeth died the morning of January 16, 2009, 
     at the age of 91, in his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania;
       Whereas it is the intent of the Senate to recognize and pay 
     tribute to the life of Andrew Wyeth, his passion for 
     painting, his contribution to the world of art, and his deep 
     understanding of the human condition;
       Whereas Andrew Wyeth was born the son of famed illustrator 
     N.C. Wyeth and grew up surrounded by artists in an 
     environment that encouraged imagination and free-thinking;
       Whereas Andrew Wyeth became an icon who focused his work on 
     family and friends in Chadds Ford and in coastal Maine, where 
     he spent his summers and where he met Christina Olson, the 
     subject of his famed painting `Christina's World';
       Whereas Andrew Wyeth's paintings were immensely popular 
     among the public but sometimes disparaged by critics for 
     their lack of color and bleak landscapes portraying isolation 
     and alienation;
       Whereas Andrew Wyeth's works could be controversial, as 
     they sparked dialogue and disagreement in the art world 
     concerning the natures of realism and modernism;
       Whereas Andrew Wyeth was immensely patriotic and an 
     independent thinker who broke with many of his peers on the 
     issues of the day;
       Whereas Andrew Wyeth was a beloved figure in Chadds Ford 
     and had his own seat at the corner table of the Chadds Ford 
     Inn, where reproductions of his art line the walls;
       Whereas Andrew Wyeth received the Presidential Medal of 
     Freedom in 1963 and the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor in 
     1988;
       Whereas Andrew Wyeth let it be known that he lived to paint 
     and never lost his simplicity and caring for people despite 
     his immense fame and successful career; and
       Whereas the passing of Andrew Wyeth is a great loss to the 
     world of art, and his life should be honored with highest 
     praise and appreciation for his paintings which remain with 
     us although he is gone: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) recognizes Andrew Wyeth as a treasure of the United 
     States and one of the most popular artists of the twentieth 
     century; and
       (2) recognizes the outstanding contributions of Andrew 
     Wyeth to the art world and to the community of Chadds Ford, 
     Pennsylvania.

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