Christina’s World 1948 vs. Woman Dressing Her Hair 1940

Christina’s World 1948 vs. Woman Dressing Her Hair 1940
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Christina’s World 1948 vs. Woman Dressing Her Hair 1940
Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth is a painting set in the 1948 countryside, Coastal Maine. It portrays a subject of suffering, disrepair, and isolation caused by a disease, and in the larger context, the devastations of postwar America. Famed as an American realism artist, Wyeth features a youthful woman in a pink dress, providing the audience with her rearview while sitting on a grassy landscape and staring at a distant farmhouse. Although seemingly calm at first glance, Christina’s silhouette is tense, nearly frozen, and stuck to the grassy field in a close-up view. Perhaps, in his traditional way of depicting sorrow, despair, personal, and real-life situations, Wyeth portrays Christina’s struggle while trying to move on grass since she is disabled. The painter intelligently illustrates the scenario to the audience who has a keen eye for art. Christina’s World painting was inspired by Christina Olson, Wyeth’s neighbor who could not walk due to a nerve degenerating disease.
On the other hand, Pablo Picasso’s Woman Dressing Her Hair is set in 1940 French Royan and depicts a nude woman pliantly confined in a tight-spaced boxlike room. Her massive portrait is gracelessly condensed in the space, with her contorted body spread all over the frame. The painting was created in Europe’s Nazis occupation period and just a few months before German advancement into Royan, France. In a similar scenario, the painting portrays a subject of despair and anxiety due to the civil wars across Europe and the Nazis’ brutal occupation of numerous countries on the continent. Picasso was known for a variety of stylistic approaches in his works. In this painting, he illustrates a serene view of a nude woman grooming herself, perhaps to get the audience’s attention. Still, he cleverly transforms her into a grotesque figure to portray the confinement and anxiety instigated by Nazis during this dark period. The painting was inspired by a beautiful photographer, Dora Maar, who spent most of her time with Picasso in his studio.
Christina’s World depicts a realistic piece of art hence falling under the realism genre. It shows a natural Coastal Maine’s countryside landscape with fine details. The grassy surroundings and the farmhouse all look familiar, and the middle-aged woman on the grass manifests a crawling posture, something which happens in an actual situation. However, her pose might possess a symbolic connotation considering the period of the painting when the World was still recovering from the adversities of World War II. Hence, the image is a realistic piece with some symbolic elements. Often considered a representational artist (Fischer, 1994), Wyeth’s paintings usually possess a photographic feel due to the portrayal of detailed clarities in his artworks. Fischer (1994) further opines that Wyeth’s works depict reality and “orchestrate” realism in some way, thus allowing his audience to discover the images and ideas as intended by his works.
Conversely, Woman Dressing Her Hair is abstr...