PHILADELPHIA—Andrew Wyeth is, by common consent, the most American of painters. As revealed, however, in the exhibition "Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic," which recently opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, it is only a very particular kind of "Americanness" that his art reflects.

He is determined and industrious. He is modest and makes no fancy shows. He has a certainty of vision and he adheres to it. His is an elemental America: one in which hardworking folk live in close interdependence with nature. They work the land or they fish, not always successfully. And they are constantly aware of death. In 2006, in other words, Wyeth’s America is pure hokum.

 

Even when a wind blows through it, Wyeth’s world is marked by stillness. In the thoughtful text panel that accompanies a painting called Renfield (1999) we read that, “Wyeth rarely makes reference to the modern world in his art.”

In fact, it’s not just that he doesn’t make reference to it. It’s as though he can’t do it. The headlit cars that sweep along a distant highway in that painting are as cartoon-like as anything in the work of Pop artist Red Grooms. Far more in keeping with the Wyeth mood—and given far more painstaking attention—is the old truck that he painted in 1943 in Public Sale.

The question of stylistic development during Wyeth’s career is perplexing. He veered more obviously toward some aspects of European surrealism in a number of paintings in the 1940s, but in the bigger scheme of things, he doesn’t really develop at all. Consequently, this show can be arranged thematically, with paintings made decades apart hanging side by side without any sense of technical rupture. No doubt Wyeth, and probably this show’s curators, would see this as a reflection of ‘timelessness,’ but I think the truth is that in most of his art Wyeth’s character is that of an illustrator, who developed his techniques early on and saw no need to alter them. And why should he?

He is, after all, technically brilliant. He can render the appearances of his imaginary world with utter assurance. It is slightly dark, slightly subdued in color, and everywhere filled with the fine detail of hair, grass, woodgrain, fabric, tree branches and the like that he can spend hours translating into a satisfyingly craftsmanlike tempera surface. This allows him to concentrate, unfortunately, on the arch and melancholic symbolism that is his stock in trade. Empty chairs, empty rooms, views in or out of windows or doorways, coats hanging on hooks, even a pair of old boots, all of these things stand for the missing people who might have occupied or possessed them. To my taste the symbolism is crass.

Wyeth is, nevertheless, enormously popular. Even on the beautiful Tuesday afternoon that I visited the show, it was so jam-packed that it was literally impossible to move in one or two places. And not just in the first couple of rooms. Even in the final room, people stood dutifully listening to their acoustic guides and seemed to love everything about it.

So is this show worth the admission? Yes, it certainly is. Not just because it has been assembled with enthusiasm and erudition. Not just because Wyeth is a scintillating painterly technician. But because at the center of his art—and perhaps one of the reasons why he kept all those pictures of Helga Testorf secret for so long—there is a small body of more or less unadorned portraiture that is undoubtedly major.

In these paintings, like Sea Dog (1971) or Braids (1977), which actually features Ms. Testorf, he brings much of the old painterly virtuosity to bear, but rather than the minor poetry of absence that becomes so familiar elsewhere, we are faced with an authentic human presence. It is not a comfortable experience at all.

Although his sitters do not always look directly back at us in these unhappy paintings, the detailing of their faces is genuinely unsettling, as though the intensity of the artist’s gaze that informed it is echoed in the brooding human substance that it brings into existence. This is traditional portraiture. There is nothing magical about it. In fact, rather than "Memory and Magic," the organizers of this show might have better called it "Hokum and Humanity."

"Memory and Magic" is on view at the Philadephia Museum of Art through July 16, 2006. The show ran at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta from Nov. 12, 2005-Feb. 26, 2006.