Виттория Уайет провела мастер-класс в музее долины Напа и опровергла мифы о символизме в картинах своего деда

Victoria Wyeth gave a master class and two docent classes last weekend at the Napa Valley Museum of Art & Culture. She is the granddaughter of the famed American realist artist Andrew Wyeth. A black-and-white photo of Andrew Wyeth by her granddaughter Victoria Wyeth. The 1997 photo is entitled, “His Laugh Was the Best.” Victoria is old-school, using a late-1970s Canon AE-1 film camera, developing the film and printing the photos herself in a darkroom. N.C. Wyeth’s 1921 illustration for Rip Van Winkle, the subject of a Washington Irving tale, published by Charles Scribner & Sons. The illustrations used for a book is all about selling the book. “So the more colorful, the more action, the faster it’s going to sell,” said Wyeth’s great-granddaughter, Victoria Wyeth. Victoria Wyeth gave a master class and two docent classes last weekend at the Napa Valley Museum of Art & Culture. She is the granddaughter of the famed American realist artist Andrew Wyeth. Dave Stoneberg/Correspondent photo A black-and-white photo of Andrew Wyeth by her granddaughter Victoria Wyeth. The 1997 photo is entitled, “His Laugh Was the Best.” Victoria is old-school, using a late-1970s Canon AE-1 film camera, developing the film and printing the photos herself in a darkroom. Dave Stoneberg/Correspondent photo N.C. Wyeth’s 1921 illustration for Rip Van Winkle, the subject of a Washington Irving tale, published by Charles Scribner & Sons. The illustrations used for a book is all about selling the book. “So the more colorful, the more action, the faster it’s going to sell,” said Wyeth’s great-granddaughter, Victoria Wyeth. It was an hour of bliss. Last weekend, Victoria Wyeth entertained those who had come to see her famous family’s paintings, drawings and photographs at the Napa Valley Museum of Art & Culture (MAC), just south of St. Helena. Victoria could be called an expert on the exhibit, which is called “The Wyeths: Three Generations/Works from the Bank of America Collection.” It opened in April and will close Sept. 13. The exhibit includes works from her great-grandfather N.C. (Newell Convers) Wyeth, her grandfather, Andrew, and her uncle, Jamie. It also includes Victoria’s own black-and-white photographs of her family, where they lived and the surrounding area. “So, I don’t rely on art historians. I think a lot of them are just totally full of s---,” Victoria Wyeth said at the beginning of her hour-long docent tour on Saturday, Aug. 8. She continued, “I think they have no idea what they’re talking about. And when they say it’s a boat, but it’s not really a boat, it’s symbolic or something, I would say to them, well, where did you find that?” Wyeth said she began interviewing and recording her family when she was 14, which was 33 years ago. “I’m constantly taking notes on everything, so this is actually what my family told me to tell you," she said. "And I apologize if it differs from what you’ve heard, but we can always get into a debate about that.” Wyeth added that many times a door is just a door, or a window is just a window. Her grandfather would paint what he saw, Wyeth said, but would delete technology like telephone poles, or omit a window when it didn't fit the composition. “You know, I did a tour yesterday for some people and someone asked 'What do the windows mean?' and so forth," she said. "I don’t think windows mean anything. I know there have been whole exhibitions looking at windows as thresholds, but sometimes it’s just a window. That’s it.” Some of Andrew Wyeth’s paintings come from his imagination, including his 1983 work “Antler Crown,” which shows a green fir tree underneath an antler chandelier. The scene doesn’t exist except in Andrew’s imagination. It’s not the antler crown that’s interesting to Victoria Wyeth. It is her grandfather’s brushwork at the top of the painting. “You are wasting your time if you don’t come in here and look at the pictures like this,” Wyeth said, inches from the canvas. “This little bit of icy blue in the distance here. This is insane.” She added that Andrew was using “thousands and thousands of little teeny-tiny brush strokes.” Some critics have said that the tracks adjacent to the tree symbolize Andrew’s angst at his father’s death as a result of a freight train hitting his car at a railroad crossing in 1945. Victoria Wyeth, though, disputes that notion. “I hate symbolism,” she declares. “I can show you 40 pictures he did before his dad died that have tracks and stuff. So my deal with symbolism is, it’s just a way to sell tickets and sell books. He (Andrew) just wants you to know he’s painting his life. These are friends, family, places he loved. It’s simple, simple.” The five-month exhibit at the MAC is the only time these paintings will be shown in California. The exhibit features some 75 original paintings by N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945), a famous illustrator and painter of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; his son, Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009), an artist who used watercolor, dry brush and egg tempera and who depicted his life in a realistic way; and Jamie Wyeth (born in 1946), who paints subjects of everyday life, in oil and mixed media. Victoria Wyeth’s black-and-white photos of her family are an adjacent exhibit. The MAC is located at 607 St. Helena Highway (Highway 29/128) in St. Helena. For more information, visit napavalleymuseum.org. Editor’s note: Dave Stoneberg is the former editor of the St. Helena Star. Renteria Vineyard Management reported a temporary layoff affecting 91 Napa employees, effective Oct. 15. The company is said to employ more than 450 workers.