Andrew Wyeth As Painter And Rule Breaker

 

My career often involved planning and producing a broad variety of visual media. The work made me aware of any number of artists, illustrators and styles both historic and contemporary. It's led me to appreciate the work of two artists in particular. One is Walter Inglis Anderson. There'll be a post about him in September. On this day we note the birth of another favorite, Andrew Wyeth. He was born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania in 1917 and died there in 2009 after a lifetime of painting individuals and landscapes near his home and at his summer residence in Maine. He represented the second of three generations of famous painters in the Wyeth family. His father, N. C. Wyeth, was a renowned illustrator and painter. His son, Jamie, who turned 74 last week, continues painting in his father's footsteps in Pennsylvania and Maine.

I can best characterize his work as compelling, thought-provoking dreams on canvas, not quite real, not quite abstract. Here are three painting by Andrew Wyeth offering a comfortable contrast to the season of his birth. Readers can see the full range of his subjects at his authorized website.

Ice Pond 1969

My aim is to escape from the medium with which I work; to leave no residue of technical mannerisms to stand between my expression and the observer. To seek freedom through significant form and design rather than through the diversion of so-called free and accidental brush handling.

Branch in the Snow 1980

My aim is not to exhibit craft, but rather to submerge it, and make it rightfully the handmaiden of beauty, power and emotional content.

Shredded Wheat 1982

What you have to do is break all the rules.

Thanks to the BBC and Michael Palin we have a fine documentary of Andrew Wyeth, his craft and emotion, and especially his sense of place. Hope you take the time to enjoy it.

Sources

Text:
quotations, art-quotes.com

Harper Lee Writes An Instant Classic

 

Today marks the 62nd anniversary of the publication of To Kill A Mockingbird. The author, Harper Lee, passed away six years ago. I doubt that her hometown, Monroeville, Alabama, has been the same without her. She spent her entire life there living a rather reclusive existence with the help of locals who spent a half century sending curious fans everywhere but to Miss Nelle's place. Between 1960 and 1964 she published a few essays and participated in interviews then quietly "retired" until the publication of her second novel in 2015.

We can only imagine how many millions of American high school students have read To Kill A Mockingbird. I graduated from high school in the mid-60's and don't recall if the book was required reading; however, it did make the list in college. In fact, I still have that paperback, scuffed, tattered, dog-eared, and stained after several readings by me and my children.

In the face of political correctness and wokeism, Mockingbird has recently come under attack for its language (the N-word and other slurs) and subject (rape) as well as its portrayal of oppression and paternalism. Today, movements to ban the book from schools and libraries have resulted in only one outright banning but the controversy has unfortunately rendered the book untouchable as a learning tool in middle and high schools across the nation.

Scuffed, tattered, dog-eared, and stained

For more on the book and it's impact on American culture here is an article in The Huffington Post featuring four defenses of this enduring work. And here is a link to a more critical review by Allen Barra from The Wall Street Journal. Barra's observations are brief and well worth reading. For a fine summation of the life of the author, here is her obituary by William Grimes that appeared in The New York Times, February 19, 2016.

Bob Dylan Pens A Masterpiece

 

Bob Dylan turned 81 earlier this year. That means he's been writing songs for over 60 years. He was only 21 on July 9, 1962 when he walked into the Columbia Recording Studios in New York to record a song to be included on his second album. The song, Blowin' in the Wind, brought him fame and recognition as one of the nation's leading folk poets of the twentieth century. The lyrics and Dylan's comments on the song were published in June 1962 in the folk journal, Sing Out. He said this:

Too many of these hip people are telling me where the answer is but oh I won’t believe that. I still say it’s in the wind and just like a restless piece of paper it’s got to come down some . . . But the only trouble is that no one picks up the answer when it comes down so not too many people get to see and know . . . and then it flies away.

Dylan and Joan Baez, March on Washington, August 8. 1963

The music critic, Andy Gill, said this about the song in his book, Classic Bob Dylan, 1962-1969: My Back Pages:

Blowin' in the Wind marked a huge jump in Dylan's songwriting. Prior to this, efforts like The Ballad of Donald White and The Death of Emmett Till had been fairly simplistic bouts of reportage songwriting. Blowin' in the Wind was different: for the first time, Dylan discovered the effectiveness of moving from the particular to the general. Whereas The Ballad of Donald White would become completely redundant as soon as the eponymous criminal was executed, a song as vague as Blowin' in the Wind could be applied to just about any freedom issue. It remains the song with which Dylan's name is most inextricably linked, and safeguarded his reputation as a civil libertarian through any number of changes in style and attitude.

Blowin' In the Wind is a poem for our time, perhaps all time.

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
U.S. Archives and Records Service, Rowland Scherman Collection

Text:
wikipedia.com, Bob Dylan entry
history.com

When Crosby, Stills, And Nash Found Their Voice

 

Music flows like water coursing through shoals, eddy lines, and pools in an ever-changing pattern. One could say those who make the music follow similar and often bumpy routes that leave little time for thought about destinations. That's the way it was in Laurel Canyon. The canyon road winds its way off Hollywood Bouevard and up into the Santa Monica Mountains not far downtown Los Angeles. By the mid-1960s its residents had already played an important role in shaping what popular music fans know as the California sound.

In 1968 Laurel Canyon was about to work its magic on three young musicians who would go on to make extraordinary music. The Byrds had already fired David Crosby, Buffalo Springfield broke up leaving Stephen Stills without work, and Graham Nash felt far too restrained working with the Hollies. They knew each other through the music scene in Los Angeles and networks that develop naturally among like-minded folks. Crosby and Stills had already been jamming in Florida and elsewhere. Both knew Crosby through his American tours.

CSN's first album, released in May 1969

The fourth name, and catylyst in this siory, is singer-songwriter, Joni Mitchell. She shared the canyon with many other music industry notables and up-and-comers. Mitchell's home was described (Mark Volman) as "a little different...not so much maternal but about holding court in terms of songwriters who could find themselves there on any given night...and present their music to a kind of inner circle of people." On July 3 circumstances brought Crosby, Stills, and Nash together at the house. "Nash asked Stills and Crosby to repeat their performance of a new song by Stills, “You Don't Have To Cry”, with Nash improvising a third part harmony." In a Daily Mail interview, Nash recalled, "That night, while Joni listened, the three of us sang together for the first time. I heard the future in the power of those voices. And I knew my life would never be the same."

Neither would music for millions around the world. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and later, Neil Young, would go on to phenomenal success and influence in folk rock and popular music, a force very much with us today.


A postscript: Among the principals, there is disagreement about the location of this monumental event; however, Mitchell, Crosby, and close friend, Elliot Roberts, insist it was at Mitchell's home. The official CSN biography by Dave Zimmer and Henry Diltz concurs.





Sources:

wikipedia.org, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
vanityfair.com, "An Oral History of Laurel Canyon, the 60s and 70s Music Mecca"," March 2115

Quotes:

"You Don't Have To Cry" quote is from Dave Zimmer and Henry Diltz, Crosby, Stills & Nash: The Biography, Da Capo Press, 2008
Nash quote, dailymail.co.uk
Volman quote: Hotel California: The True Adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Barney Hoskins. Wiley, 2007

It's Wheels Up For Jefferson Airplane In 1965

 

On this day in 1965 singer-songwriter, Marty Balin, watched a frustrated hootenanny try-out walk off the stage of The Drinking Gourd in disgust over his performance. Balin liked what little he heard and was impressed by the man's ambition. He went backstage and asked Paul Kantner if he would join a band he was forming for his new Haight-Ashbury club called The Matrix. Kantner agreed. He didn't know it at the time, but he and Balin had just formed a band that would become Jefferson Airplane.

In a matter of days, another Drinking Gourd singer, Signe Toly Anderson, would join. Kantner recruited his downstairs neighbor, Jorma Kaukonen, as another guitarist. A local drummer and bass guitarist filled out the group. Kaukonen would convince Jack Casady to become their new bass later in the year.

Six weeks after Balin and Kantner had their backstage chat, Jefferson Airplane debuted as the house band at The Matrix on August 13, 1965. The band was an instant success and went on to release their first album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, a year later. Signe Toly Anderson (vocals) and Skip Spence (drummer) soon left and were replaced by Grace Slick and Spencer Dryden. The group's next album, Surrealistic Pillow, launched them to international success.

Today only Kaukonen, Casady, and Slick survive out of the eight members of the Airplane in their first two years as they pioneered the San Francisco Sound.

Sources

Wikipedia.com, Jefferson Airplane
classicbands.com, Rock and Roll History
youtube.com, Signe Toly Anderson interview, KGON Portland, 2011
youtube.com. Mart Balin: Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, Joe Vertino, producer, martybalin.net, 2009

Independence Day 2022: A Short Assignment

Whilst the last members were signing [the Constitution], Doctor Franklin, looking towards the Presidents chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art, a rising, from a setting, sun. I have, said he, often and often, in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but now at length, I have the happiness to know, that it is a rising, and not a setting sun.

The Rising Sun chair used by George Washington during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia

That was James Madison quoting Benjamin Franklin during the debates in the Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 17, 1787. Eleven years earlier many of those at the Constitutional Convention were also present for the signing of the exceptional American document whose ideals were set in a legal framework in the Constitution. We are, of course, talking about the Declaration of Independence signed on this day 246 years ago. To fully appreciate its meaning I think Americans should take a few minutes to read and reflect on this extraordinary document on every Independence Day. If you want to understand American exceptionalism, start here:

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. 

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

In the spirit of the freedom of the American experiment established on July 4, 1776, our cultural experience continues to reinvent itself every day. We can thank the Founding Fathers for that freedom, but with that comes the awesome responsibility to preserve the system that created and sustains it. In the coming days, I hope you take some time between the burgers, the parades, the fireworks and whatever to think about that responsibility and resolve to keep our federal republic and representative democracy strong for ourselves and our future generations.

Three Days At Gettysburg In 1863

 

Today marks the second of three days of conflict we know as the Battle of Gettysburg, fought July 1-3, 1863. On this day Little Round Top, Devil's Den, Wheatfield, Culp's Hill, Peach Orchard, and Cemetery Hill become place names embedded in our history. One could say this battle had two endings. First the battle itself ended in a loss for the Confederate States of America. And second it was the last time the Confederacy would attempt to carry the war into a northern state. A year later in August 1864 the Union unconditionally controlled the Mississippi River and relentlessly pressed Confederate forces in Virginia. In the Deep South, General Sherman's army devastated Atlanta. Six months later, he would be in Savannah and poised to destroy the remains of the Confederacy as he moved north through the Carolinas.

The American Civil War is a perennial but fading topic in our history. Indeed, it did preserve the Union as President Abraham Lincoln intended and left us with any number of both good and bad consequences in our national experience. Regarding those consequences, we should not expect otherwise as that is the way events unfold in the great wheel of history. And so it is with our great wheels of personal experience.

Now in the midst my seventh decade immersed in all of this I'm a bit surprised and certainly privileged to have experienced Gettysburg at 100 and 150. The place is a personal holy ground because three people cared.

The Old Ranger and his dad at Gettysburg National Military Park in 1954

First of all. my parents always loved being in nature and its historical overlay. Living in the Potomac River watershed afforded our family many opportunities to enjoy any number of places of national significance. As is often the case, first impressions become lasting ones. I was seven years old when we spent a long weekend exploring almost every foot of Gettysburg National Military Park. It was a fascinating experience and I still have the souvenirs to prove it.

The Old Ranger and his mom at Gettysburg National Military Park in 1954

About six years later I met George Landis, the third person in this story. Landis taught middle school history and social studies on the eve of the Civil War Centennial in 1959. A Pennsylvanian with a love of history and basketball he devoted almost an entire school year to the study of the Civil War. He was a superb teacher, highly animated and far ahead of his time. He focused on experiential learning that took his students beyond lectures into the world of original sources, multimedia, role-playing, critical thinking and more. I recall fondly seeing every blackboard in his classroom filled with detailed maps of battles, each carefully drawn and labelled with colored chalk. A little more than a decade after my year with Landis, I began a long and rewarding career immersed in experiential learning in the sacred places and histories preserved in our national parks. Although I've been out of national park traces for over fifteen years the study of the American experience they inspired is very much alive and well.

There will be tens of thousands of people visiting Gettysburg this week as well as many thousands of volunteers recreating and commemorating the events that took place there. There will be lasting impressions made this week about the sacrifices, the consequences, and the wheels of history both national and personal. Somewhere in the crowd there will be a seven year-old with a new enthusiasm for this defining moment in our national experience. It is reassuring to know the commemorative landscape at Gettysburg, with the pride and serenity of an old veteran, will be waiting there to welcome him on his return visit in 2063 to recall the battle in it's bicentennial year.