What’s Missing?

In 2007, I went to a marvelous art exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a major exhibition of the work of Andrew Wyeth. I was expecting to be pleasantly entertained by the works on display and to renew memories of paintings, some of which, I had seen many times before. I considered Wyeth a ‘realistic’ painter with some existential leanings, whose work expressed longing, loneliness, and a world that was rather bleak. Little did I know that I would come away from the exhibit with a completely different view of Wyeth and what one could take away from his art work.

The epiphany came when I got to the work called Groundhog Day and read the commentary that accompanied it. After experiencing this I had to obtain the book associated with the exhibition, Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2005) and especially read an analysis of Groundhog Day by Kathleen A. Foster titled “Meaning and Medium in Wyeth’s Art: Revisiting Groundhog Day.” In this essay, Ms. Foster took me beyond the seemingly simple and realistic world of Groundhog Day and informed me about what was behind the painting; what was missing in the final presentation. I found the revelations enlightening and, in many cases, mind boggling.

To begin with the title of the work, Groundhog Day, seems to suggest “a very particular day—February 2, 1959—and the timeless distillation of days past and future, of lives played out in this place.” (Page 85: all page references are to the book referenced above.) Yet, we learn that the name of the painting does not refer to the day the painting was done or a day the artist might have been trying to capture. The painting was named by Wyeth’s wife Betsy and is named for the day that the painting was completed. In effect, the title of the painting has very little, if anything, to do with the work itself. Therefore, can one argue that the name of the painting has absolutely nothing to do with the painting itself…or, is it part of the meaning?

The scene depicted in the painting appears to be a serene picture with the immediate focus in the forefront of an ivory plate, coffee cup and saucer and a knife on a grayish (because it is not in the direct light) table top. Behind the table is wall paper and above the table and setting is a window that dominates the picture. Through the window we see a fence with barbed wire and the end of a tree trunk that has been sawed and has a very jagged edge where the two parts of the trunk were violently separated because the saw did not cut all the way through the trunk. The sun is relatively low in the sky because the shadows are closer to the horizontal than the vertical…it is getting on in the afternoon. The whole picture seems benign except for the jagged edge observed on the severed tree trunk. An interpretation: “peace” with “violence suppressed.” (85)

We learn from Foster that there are sixty surviving studies and related works that “reveal the metamorphosis of this image and suggests the layered content of the painting.” (85) For example, we learn that the place at the table is set for Karl Kuerner who was a brutal character himself, a veteran of the German army in WWI. He was a machine-gunner, deer slayer, hog butcher, and master of death. He was a surrogate father to Wyeth after Wyeth’s father was killed: here is the absence of the surrogate father representing the absence of the real father? (86)

The initial drawings of the room showed the wife Anna in the corner with a dog curled up on the cushion next to her. A table is barely hinted at. (88) The early drawings were done quickly and scribbled and different schemes were tried…one in which Anna is done in silhouette against the window. But, Anna proves to be too restless, too inaccessible. (90) Anna is drawn with the dog (the violent foil to Anna’s domesticity) and then the dog becomes more and more important…more and more intense. (91) Now the window creeps in…the dog and the window…the inside and the outside…the bright, cold, wild, unfriendly outside and the calm and snug inside…the dangerous and the less free. (92) The dog disappears! There is just the window and the outside captures more sunlight and the interior becomes darker.

Then, Wyeth gets interested in the table…and the plate, the cup and the knife. Representations of Anna are found as freshly baked German bread or flowers on the teacup, but, in the final, Anna is not remembered on the table. (94) From there Wyeth focuses on the wallpaper. The existence of Anna is seen now in the wallpaper…an expression of Anna for the pattern reflects Pennsylvania German peasant taste in modern mode…determinedly gay and yet somehow forlorn in its promise of springtime and domestic tranquility. The wallpaper is all that remains of Anna in the final rendition of the picture. (95)

Attention moves to the log outside. Soon the dog is moved outside and the dog appears in front of the log. Then focus is placed on the jagged log and the light is changed to emphasize the ‘bared fangs’ of the splintered log. (99) But, now Wyeth starts to remove things…he knows too much!

The final painting is slightly ‘off center’. He telescopes space and makes the surface of the painting ‘two-dimensional’. The conventional rules of perspective are ignored for the diagonals of the interior never resolve into a single vanishing point. Instead, they suggest multiple viewpoints. (101) Tension in the room is therefore increased. Long shadows on the grass imply that the sun is low in the sky while the bars on the wall seem to indicate sun from an earlier time in the day: late and early…fall and spring?

The terrain rises outside the window and blocks any concept of distance…and to the left at the top, there are some ‘tormented trees’ and darkness. Is the wind blowing in an ominous fashion to indicate something unsettled in the future? (102) Peace and orderliness prevail inside while there is a menacing energy, puzzling shadows and disturbed trees outside. Again, late and early…fall and spring? The picture is made up of cross-currents and contradictions. Yet, so much is missing!

And, this was what struck me so. Not the picture itself. Not the tension. Not the apparent realistic nature of the painting. What struck me was that there is so much about the picture that isn’t there. In fact, just looking at the picture and studying it and analyzing it doesn’t get you anywhere near the richness and depth of what is really present (implicitly as well as explicitly). The essence of the picture, which is done in realistic detail, is not solely captured in what is present in the picture…but must include what is missing!

We are dealing with a situation in which Wyeth is, in a sense, god. The painting that Wyeth completed is the ‘world’ as Wyeth presents it to us. Wyeth is the only one who has complete information as to what should be in the picture and what is implied in the picture. We only have incomplete information. We don’t know what the clues are in the information that is given to us in the picture. Is there meaning there? Is there order there? What about Anna? What about Karl? What about the dog? And, so on and so on.

We have the studies that Wyeth created in order to develop the final rendition of Groundhog Day. We have things that Wyeth has said or has written about the painting. We have the interpretation given to the work by trained experts like Kathleen Foster. And, we have our own experience that we bring to the vision and analysis of the painting. But, we still have to wonder, “What is missing?” We can ask questions about the meaning of the picture and the objects that are in the picture, but, we never know what the questions are that we should be asking if we want to more fully understand the painting.

This is what is true of all the situations that we face in life. We can argue that ‘there is nothing there’ and interpret the pictures in terms of existential angst and alienation. Or we can look at the world as one of Wyeth’s paintings arguing that ‘there is something there’; it is just that there is so much more to see in it than we, at present, can see. As Jacob Bronowski wrote, “order is hard to find, one must work to find it.” And, that is our task…to observe the creation that we are a part of and seek to find order in it, realizing, of course, that we can never see it all…we look through a glass darkly.