Christina

Christina's World
Project
Andrew Wyeth


Volunteer:
Date:
Grade Level:		4th Grade
Artist:		Andrew Wyeth
Print Sculpture:		Christina's World
Art Vocabulary:

I.	The Artist
	Today we are doing the American artist, Andrew Wyeth. He was born in 1917, in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. He is still alive. His father, N.C. Wyeth, was also a famous artist, who illustrated children's books, like Robin Hood and Treasure Island. His son, Jamie Wyeth, is a famous artist, too, who has done portraits of some very famous people, of them, Andy Warhol (see portrait). Andrew was the youngest of 5 children, and 3 of his sisters and brothers are also artists. He was a sickly child, and was taught at home, as were all but one of his siblings. He had an arthritic hip which made him limp. He wasn't in school or athletics. He says, "I felt so left out from other kids! Paint was my only point, my only chance. I didn't fit in. I pick out models who are misfits, and I'm a misfit. There's a stigma." He never went to art school or to college, and hand only one art teacher – his father. His father emphasized the arts – music, poetry, drama and most of all – drawing and painting. By the age of 6, he was drawing constantly. He did his first professional painting at the age of 12, to illustrate an article of his father's.
	By the time he was 19, he had his first one man show, and all the paintings were sold. Here is one of his early watercolors, called "The Coot Hunter," which is at the Art Institute. He has been able to support himself as an artist all his life, and has never held any other job. He married Betsy James when he was 22, and they had 2 sons, Nicholas and James.
	Wyeth paints realistic paintings of rural America, specifically: Cushing, Maine and Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, the two places he lives. He draws the fields, the woods, the sea, the creatures, the people and their tools.
	There is no movement in his paintings and little color. They're shades of black, white and brown. His paintings are open and empty with no people or only one, sometimes, two. Each is like a frozen moment in time.
	Wyeth uses 3 different techniques in his drawings: watercolor, dry brush watercolor and tempera. You all know about watercolor, where you dip your brush in water, then rub it on a hard cake of color, and control the intensity of the color by how much water you use. His watercolors are explosive, full of color, painted quickly. Here is a watercolor.
	When Wyeth paints using dry brush watercolor, he dips a small brush into the watercolor, then squeezes out most of the color and moisture and splays out the bristles. He strokes the brush on top of a wet watercolor wash and then brush leaves separate, distinct marks, which can be layered and cross-hatched and woven.
	He is most famous for his tempera. Tempera is made from egg yoke mixed with colors that have been ground to powder and thinned with water. It dries almost immediately, leaving little time for correction. Wyeth uses a fine watercolor brush and slowly builds his tempera paintings, stroke by stroke, to pain very detailed paintings. He spends months on a single painting. Christina's World is his most famous tempera. It is one of the four most well-known paintings, the others being Whistler's Mother ("Study in Grey and White") Grant Wood's "American Gothic," and Gilbert Stuart's "Portrait of George Washington."
	He spent an entire summer painting "Christina's World" in 1948. Christina Olson and her brother Alvaro were friends of the Wyeth's. Andrew Wyeth painted the Olsons and their house many times over the years. Christina is crippled by infantile paralysis. The painting is called "Christina's World" because she can only go as far as she can drag herself. Over time, her world became smaller and smaller. This is their house and bar. She's returning from her flower garden.
	Wyeth said, "She's like a queen ruling all of Cushing. She's everybody's conscience. I honesty did not pick her out to do because she was a cripple. It was the dignity of Christina Olson. The dignity of the lady." He also said, "I think one's art goes as far and as deep as one's love goes, I see no reason for painting but that. If I have anything to offer, it is my emotional contact with the place where I live and the people I do." He paints the places he lives, and the people he knows. He has a close relationship with whomever he paints, often living with them or having keys to their house, and coming and going as he pleases. Here is a painting he did of the Sipalas, called "Marriage." Show "Marriage" He let himself into their house, and started this painting when they were asleep. After that, they posed for him. He tries to get to the truth of what he's painting. Here is another (older) portrait of Christina.
	He does not sentimentalize his subjects, or make them beautiful, but we see their beauty through his eyes. He said, "Art to me is seeing. I think you have got to use your eyes as well as your emotion, and one without the other just doesn't work. That's my art."
	Wyeth paints in both watercolor and tempera. His early watercolors were painted in a fluid manner resembling that of Winslow Homer, but he soon adopted the technique of dry brush, a more controlled and accurate method of handling the medium, which he uses for both sketching and finished paintings. Most of Wyeth's best-known painting, however, are painted in egg tempera, which allows him to attain the greatest possible degree of precision.
	Wyeth draws his subject primarily from two locales that he knows intimately: the farming community of his native Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and the fishing town of Cushing, Maine, which has been his summer home for many years. Tenant Farmer (1961; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington), painted in Chadds Ford, suggests the unseen farmer's struggle with nature; Christina's World (1948; Museum of Modern Art, New York City), intimates the quality of life of a paralyzed Maine woman. Wyeth's years-long affair with his Chadds Ford neighbor Helga Testort was revealed when some of the many paintings he made of her were first exhibited in 1986.
	Rowland Elzea Bibliography: Hoving, T., Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth (1978) Logsdon, Gene, Wyeth People: A Portrait of Andrew Wyeth as Seen by his Friends and Neighbors (1988) Meyerman, Richard, The Work of Andrew Wyeth (1968) Thoreau, Henry D., The World of Andrew Wyeth (1991) Wyeth, Andrew, The Helga Pictures (1992) Wyeth, Betsy James, Wyeth at Kuerners (1976)
II.	The Painting: Christina's World
	Woman lying on grass
	How do we know it is a woman? Or a girl?
	She has a relationship with the house on the hill. How do we know that?
	She is looking at the house.
	She has skinny arms and seems to struggle to get up.
	Is she a cripple?
	What time of year is it?
	It is fall or late summer. The color of the grass says so. A section of the field has already been harvested. The woman or girl is wearing a short-sleeved dress, a sign that it is still warm outside.
	There are no trees, No flowers. The sky is gray.
	Is a storm coming? Is it why the woman is struggling to get up? Is she trying to get home before the storm?
	Is the woman's hair blowing in the wind or is it unkempt?
	Is it debatable whether it is storm or not in the picture?
	Why does it seem storm or not stormy to you?
	It seems lonely in the field. Emptiness equals loneliness here.
	Are there signs of human activity around?
	There are tracks in the field, a fence by the old weather-beaten house. A clothesline with laundry slopping in the wind. The house needs painting. It seems old. We seem to look at the house from the point of view of the girl in the grass. There are no animals in view. No farm implements. The windows of the house are obscured.
	The woman is isolated and so is the building she is looking at.
	Where does the light come from?
	There is a shadow on the woman's back. Light in the front of the house. The woman's hands are shadowed by the grass she is gripping. We are being manipulated by the light in the picture.
	Strong emotional contents of the painting.
III.	Project
	Usually we end up with something you can take home. There will be nothing to take home today. Today you will be doing performance art. Art that is in the doing. The point is to experience different handicaps. To feel what it's like to be blind or hard of hearing, to have a learning disability or difficulty drawing. It is not a contest. You will have done well if you let yourself experience these things. There will be 6 stations at 6 pots. Start with the pod you're in. When everyone in the pod is done, then the whole pod moves to the next one. Take your markers with you.
	1. Difficulty seeing: Materials: 6 pairs of eyeglasses smeared with Vaseline, alcohol wipes to clean glasses between children. Project: Do a Christmas word search. This is like cataracts, it's often how the elderly see.
	2. Difficulty hearing: Materials: Cotton balls, paper, children's markers. Project: Whisper a simple instruction, such as "draw a red circle," or don't speak at all, and let them try lip reading.
	3. Fine motor difficulties: Materials: Paper and markers. Have the children use their wrong hand to draw a snowman.
	4. Having only one hand: Materials: Napkins, crackers, peanut butter, plastic knives. Have them try to spread peanut butter on a cracker and eat it, using only one hand.
	5. Blindness: Materials: Paper, markers. Have them close their eyes and write their names. Get Braille cards.
	6. Dyslexia. Materials: Paper that shows what it's like to read with dyslexia. Have them try to read.
	7. Do a maze looking only in a mirror. Hand mirrors in cultural arts closet.
	8. To be done, one by one, when they're done, in the hall: Have them pick up keys while on crutches.
	The following books are available at the Riverside Library: Meyerman, Richard, The Work of Andrew Wyeth (1968) Andrew Wyeth: Temperas, Watercolors, Dry Brush, Drawings An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art Wyeth, Andrew, The Helga Pictures (1992) Pat Rohm and Linda Hutcheson, December, 2000

	Activity: We made up a poem to go along with this painting. Each student gets a strip of paper that they complete then we copied it, read it and typed it. Wishes to ___________________________________ Dreams of ___________________________________ Wants to ____________________________________ Who wonders _________________________________ Who fears __________________________________ Who is afraid of ______________________________ Who likes __________________________________ Who believes _______________________________ Who loves __________________________________ Who loves __________________________________ Who loves __________________________________ Who loves __________________________________ Who plans __________________________________ Who plans __________________________________ Who plans __________________________________