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February 13, 2012
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February 7, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Caught off-guard? President's Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer gives those who need a reason not to vote for him, a darn good one
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Jeffrey Fleishman: In newly democratic Egypt, tens of democracy activists jailed, to stand trial; their groups are 'threatening the stability of the homeland'
Julie Deardorff : Researchers say antioxidants may not be that effective and could do more harm than good
Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
February 3, 2012
Edmund Sanders : Israeli official says Iran is creating missile that could reach East Coast of US
Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
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Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
January 31, 2012
January 30, 2012
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
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Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
Jeannine Stein: An inflated ego and thinking you're 'all that' doesn't just make others sick of you, it can make you ill
Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
Ed Koch: To the New York Times, calling for the murder of Jews by those capable of having their incitement taken seriously isn't news
Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
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Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
January 19, 2012
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Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
David G. Savage: They sued their principals after slandering them online --- now the cases are headed to the Supreme Court
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January 13, 2012
Ben Lynfield: Israeli lawmakers move to annex Jewish Judea, one museum at a time
Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz: Thriving through touch: Gentle massage helps older people with low mobility improve in mind and body
January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
Warren Richey: Supreme Court says no to new rule on eyewitness testimony
John Fauber : Statins found to raise diabetes risk in postmenopausal women
Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
The Kosher Gourmet by Joseph Erdos: This mushroom and barley soup has an intense -- almost nutty -- flavor that mixes robust with Middle East. It has creaminess without cream
January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
January 21, 2009
/ 25 Teves 5769
Something waits beneath it...
By
Paul Greenberg
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show." Andrew Wyeth
A cold Friday in January was the perfect day to die, at least for Andrew Wyeth at 91. It was the very depth of the season as a cold wave swept the country. What perfect timing for a man who luxuriated in solitude. The artist was never much for company, which made him suspect in America, the land of togetherness. To be certifiably American, you must be smiling, preferably in the company of other smiling faces. Happiness, or at least the appearance thereof, is mandatory.
People who need people are the luckiest pee-e-eple in the world!
In this entirely too open society, a citizen is expected not only to believe but broadcast those beliefs. For your beliefs will never impress others unless they are displayed, and what else are beliefs good for? To validate your existence, they need to be regularly spit-shined, polished and rolled out, preferably in a portentous Edward R. Murrow voice:
THIS I Believe....
Not to broadcast your beliefs is to be selfish, antisocial, a miser with your emotions. You must Share Your Feelings. It's good for you. All the advice columnists say so. What's not permitted is to be alone with your thoughts. It is assumed which is the most effective form of being decreed that one cannot be happy alone. It's considered almost a law of physics.
What a solitary joy to see that law violated by the life and work of Andrew Newell Wyeth (1917-2009). Maybe that's why his windswept "Christina's World" became an there's no avoiding the word iconic American painting. Along with Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks," another study in aloneness.
Was Wyeth a kind of rural Hopper, or Hopper an urban Wyeth, and does it matter? Both painted solitude, exulted in it. Both were abstractionists who were dubbed realists....
But I can feel myself slipping into artspeak, and that way lies nothing good. Wyeth's paintings may appeal to many of us, but he'll never be fashionable. Even his poor fizzle of a scandal the Helga pictures wasn't much of one, just something for the Art World to talk about in a slow season.
Wyeth was right about the seasons. Fall is so much more satisfying than spring, just as endings are more instructive than beginnings. Better to go to the house of mourning than the house of joy, an ancient sage counseled. The undeniable isn't as easy to deny when leaves fall and the stark limbs stretch heavenward. Yeats said it: Things reveal themselves passing away.
And now Andrew Wyeth has passed. Yet he lingers. As in one of those portraits he used to paint of subjects who aren't there, yet very much are. As he put it, "I think a person permeates a spot...." The country is a little like that now without Andrew Wyeth; his presence permeates. And if it fades, it will be like the after-life of a Thomas Eakins or Winslow Homer through their works.
Neither the critics nor his fellow artists much approved of Wyeth. "In the art world today," he said back in 1965, "I'm so conservative I'm radical. Most painters don't care for me. I'm strange to them."
He only grew more isolated in refined circles, not that he minded. But he spoke to the American people. Charles Schulz, the cartoonist of "Peanuts" fame, was a fan. So was Mister Rogers. (When Snoopy's prized Van Gogh is lost in a fire, he replaces it with a Wyeth, and a Wyeth adorned the entryway to Fred Rogers' studio.)
The sophisticated may have dismissed Wyeth, much as linguists dismiss grammarians, or maybe literature in general. His works are insufficiently abstract, unforgivably intelligible, and entirely too popular. As if he had a door to our unconscious. He speaks to too many of us, even if only to reinforce our aloneness.
I've got a fine reproduction of "Christina's World" at home. I haven't seen it since circa 1962, when I bought it on a whim/intimation in New York, and mailed it ahead to Pine Bluff, Ark., where I was moving for a while. How was I to know I'd wind up staying there for the next 30 years or so?
Over the many years since, I've never got around to opening the rolled carton with the picture inside. Now I hesitate to. It's become a kind of talisman glowing in the dark, a genie I don't dare release from the bottle, such is the power of the dream picture.
What will Christina find when she finally crawls her way to the old house at the top of the hill? Sanctuary, surcease, illumination, all of the above? The Angel of Death welcoming her and by then welcomed? Will she finally know as she is known, as Paul says in Corinthians?
I don't know, not now. But for all these years it's been comforting to know that the picture is still there in the dark, beneath the stairs. The knowledge assures, like the thought of somebody waiting at home. The plain brown wrapper remains intact, the old postmark scarcely legible now, but like so much of Andrew Wyeth's work, the picture inside never fades in the mind's eye.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
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© 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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