Christina’s world is a painting by American artist Andrew Wyeth. The painting is an immaculate depiction of a woman, mournfully and pensively musing at her house. Although her gaze is hidden from the viewer, as Christina is turned away from the artist and depicted from the back, her figure suggests her mood to be redolent with melancholy and sadness.
The painting was painted three years after the artist’s father had been killed in a railway accident (MoMA, 2009). Evidently, this tragedy had a great impact on Andrew Wyeth’s art and this shock and grief had progressed into the further paintings and contributed to development of introspective, meditative and painstaking technique. Christina Olson, weakened by polio (Holson, 2011), is pictured in the vast expanse of yellowed and dry grass. Separate blades of grass, natural tones and shades of straws, the dim, gloomy color of the sky and the old, worn-down farmhouse are painted with scrupulousness, and this makes the viewers feel their presence within the picture and get a stunning sensation of the moody palette of the painting. Thin, bony and delicate woman’s figure dressed in pale, ashy pink dress is crawling through the spacious field of tawny grass. Her dark hair is waving in the wind, and each tress is painted in detail, which adds the atmospheric profoundness to the painting. The color resolution of the painting and melancholic mood created by the setting and tones makes the viewer feel sympathetic toward the painted woman and look deeper into the scenery, which looks rather plain and untroubled at the first sight. The woman’s figure seems to be central in the painting, since it is placed close to the center of the composition and a light pink dress catches attention standing out against the tawny, darkening grass. Still, exploring the painting closer and tracing the woman’s gaze, it becomes apparent that the old house on the hill is central for the woman. It is her home, and, painted with gloomy, obscure colors, it could possibly symbolize the pain of the woman, gnarled with disease (Holson, 2011), as the pain becomes her home. There is a roadway leading to the house depicted in the right upper corner of the painting, however, the woman sits aside from it. Her being put aside from the road to home signifies her being distant from the house, with her gaze and left hand being turned towards the house showing her longing to reunite with home again. Another symbolic sign is that Christina is placed in the area of uncut, haggard grass, while the field around the house is pictured kept, cut and cultivated. It also signifies the heroine’s distance from home and pushes the viewer into a melancholic mood.
Nuances of light and shadow and the color choice for the painting turns a usual everyday scene into a so-called magic realism, which imbues the painting with poetic mystery. The figures and scenery in the painting, though quite plain and simple, are painted accurately and in detail. This artwork with arid landscape, a woman in an ordinary dress and rural house might provoke the feelings of hopelessness and despair, but instead depicts an extraordinary, multi-leveled and versatile conquest of Christina’s story.
Works cited:
Holson, L. (2011). A Stroll Through Wyeth’s Giverny. New York Times. Retrieved 4 October 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/travel/the-farmhouse-of-wyeths- christinas-world.html?_r=0
MoMA.org,. (2014). MoMA | The Collection | Andrew Wyeth (American, 1917–2009). Retrieved 4 October 2014, from http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=6464
