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Seventy-Sixth Year
EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS OF THE UNIvERsrTY OF MICHIGAN
UNDER AUTHORITY OF BOARD IN CONTROL OF STUDENT PUBLICATIONS
ANDREW WYETH EXHIBITION-
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NEWS PHONE: 764-0552
Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
SATURDAY, JULY 1, 1967
NIGHT EDITOR: NEAL BRUSS
Decision-Making Commission:
The Interim Report
THOSE WHO FEARED that the Com-
mission on the Role of the Students in
Decision-Making, appointed by President
Hatcher last February, would turn out
to be the bureaucratic undertaker for the
student power movement were only par-
tially right. In a sense the commission's
work over the past few months has been
accompanied by widespread skepticism
by those familiar with the usual ineffec-
tiveness of such constituted bodies, on
University student policy. Enthusiasm
has been sobered by memories of the
Knauss Report, Housing Commission and
most recently, the Draft reports whose
recommendations either failed to reach
fruition, or reaffirmed the status quo.
Last week, an interim report of the
decision-making committee was released.
Since it is an interim report it is too much
to expect carefully defined conclusions.
Instead the commission pretty much con-
fines itself to a set of relevant questions:
How central is structural reform to the
task of developing a proper role for stu-
dents? What special freedoms and protec-
tions and duties and restrictions, should
the University acknowledge for students?
What constitutes a properly representa-
tive agency for students participation,
etc.?
THESE QUESTIONS are not particularly
original, and in fact, were also asked
by the members of the Knauss Commit-
tee a year ago. More important, however,
is the rapport built up among the mem-
bers of the committee as initial dogmatic
postures have been eased, and a spirit of
compromise has arisen.
A second accomplishment is summed
up in the conclusion of the report:
"We have been learning about each
other, from each other, and with each
other. We still have much to learn, but
we have every reason to hope that we can
succeed in producing a report that will
represent a constructive contribution to
the orderly progress of the University."
ASIDE FROM THESE considerations is
the matter of the timing of the final
report's release during the fall semester.
In light of the past, the commission
should submit its report to the new
University president, Robert Fleming, be-
cause prospects for success will be greater.
-LUCY KENNEDY
By NEAL BRUSS
CHICAGO-The Andrew Wyeth
exhibition at the Art Institute
here provided 200 glimpses into a
powerful and often enigmatic and
lonely New England world. The
collection finished a four-city
tour of the east and midwest in
the Art Institute here June 4.
A total of nearly 820,000 viewed
paintings at the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts in Phil-
adelphia, the Baltimore Museum
of Art, the Whitney Museum in
New York and the Chicago Insti-
tute. As a travelling one-man
show and for several of the four
museums, attendance records were
set; its $4 catalogue was sold
out and went into a second print-
ing before the exhibit reached
Chicago.
What is happening in Wyeth's
paintings is always immediately
discernible, unlike the objects of
art of some of Wyeth's contem-
poraries. While all of his work is
mind-expanding, none of it has
the cerebral confusion of the
"new-vague" art. Much of his work
is profoundly sentimental, almost
narrative.
All of the legend and emotion
attached to his popularity - the
size of his following, the Wyeth
art dynasty, the spiritual Ameri-
canism and every-blade-of-grass
realism his works embody, the
charges that German artists are
doing his type of work better
than he, that he is a hermit, that
he is a publicity seeker-are in-
consequential compared to the en-
ergy and color on the canvases.
ANDREW WYETH'S popularity
-the type of enthusiasm that
sent a two block line of fans out
an hour before the Chicago In-
stitute opened-is a phenomenon
of less than five years old. Sud-
denly by 1963 President Kenne-
dy had awarded Wyeth one of the
first Medals of Freedom; Time
magazine had put him on its
Christmashcover;this painting,
"Her Room," had drawn the high-
est price paid to a living Ameri-
can artist, $65,000.
Other magazines following
Time's lead graced their pages
with Wyeth art: the first prints
appeared from the New York
Graphics Society and elsewhere;
a year ago, a volume of dry brush
and pencil sketches appeared,
certainly some of Wyeth's most
humble work. But the real pic-
tures were scattered around the
country in museums and private
homes. Even prints two years ago
were hard to find.
In short, none of the repro-
ductions can match the original
in any respect. For 200 of the
originals to be assembled for mass
viewing provided a special oppor-
tunity for fans who had been
happy to find a few magazine
reproductions. The originals have
visual power; thereproductions, at
best, tell a Wyeth painting's story
only somewhat like it is.
NOTABLY ABSENT from the
show was. "Christina's World," the
super-popular picture of a deso-
late, groping woman cast on the
Kennedy Round Agreements
AFTER THREE YEARS of negotiations,
an agreement was finally reached by
the 53 members of the "Kennedy Round"
of tariff talks to reduce import duties
on a number of products by an average of
35 per cent. The agreement signed in Ge-
neva Thursday will reduce U.S. duties on
imports worth $7.5 billion to $8 billion
a year. This decrease will be balanced by
foreign tariff reductions on an equal
amount of U.S. exports.
It is indeed fortunate that, owing to
the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, congres-
sional approval for the tariff cuts is un-
necessary. Twenty years after the Keyn-
sian theory became generally accepted
among economists, a tax-cut proposal al-
most died in Congress before being re-
vived during the Johnson "honeymoon"
in early 1964. Republican (and many
Democratic) candidates still talk of bal-
ancing the federal budget as if it were
the prime purpose of government. And
tariff cuts in a country where lobbyists
for special-interest groups still play an
important role in government, are all too
likely to suffer the fate of the McKinley
Tariff of 1890 when a bill for lowering
import duties raised them instead to a
record high.
THE UNITED STATES is the most high-
ly industrialized country in the world
today. But, ironic as it may seem, many of
its largest firms are still clamoring for
Washington to continue their protection
by tariffs levied when such giants as
U.S. Steel-certainly no "infant industry"
-were still in the cradle. Industries voic-
ing the strongest protests against the
tariff cut were, understandably enough,
those most 'affected by the agreements:
chemicals, textiles, and leather. A repre-
sentative of the Synthetic Organic
Chemical Manufacturers Association -
which includes such industrial behemoths
as DuPont and Dow Chemical-said the
details of the agreements "confirm our
worst fears regarding the one-sided bar-
gain reached by our negotiators in Ge-
neva." Industries less affected could af-
ford to be more charitable; since few
American automobiles are exported, it
was not surprising to find a Chrysler
Corp. spokesman declaring that his com-
pany "has always been in favor of free
trade and removal of tariffs."
IT IS NONETHELESS heartening to find
that at least some members of the in-
dustrial community are in favor of the
tariff cuts. Perhaps this indicates a trend
away from the mercantilist patterns of
thought which have dominated Ameri-
can industry for over 200 years. Econom-
ists ranging on the political spectrum
from Milton Friedman to J. K. Galbraith
agree that reduction, and, if possible,
abolition of tariffs, even unilaterally,
would benefit both the world at large and
the United States. The Kennedy Round
agreements are a step in the right direc-
tion. Let us hope that more will follow.
-JENNY STILLER
tail; they are alive, and as much
a part of that meadow moment
as Rattler and the thunder hang-
ing in the still air.
1 "Day of the Fair" crazily ap-
peared two years ago as a picture
postcard from the City Art Mu-
seum of St. Louis. The tiny print
cast a woman as sort of a univer-
sal, ageless prophetess misplaced
in the Western world. The vague,
sad uneasiness in her posture
downcast eyes and hands was
hard to identify. But cast full-
size on an institute wall, the
woman becomes a shy, perhaps
restless teenager. The painting and
its cheery-shabby glow conveys a
good-natured humor at adoles-
cence which had been confused
mystery on the postcard. The girl,
like most of Wyeth's subjects, is
a friend whom Wyeth painted at
various moments through many
years.
* In "Wolf Rivers," Wyeth
gives smashing dignity to three
apples in the afternoon light. In
them is trapped a special radi-
ance and perfection which, like
most of Wyeth's world, is fleet-
ing. According to the show cata-
logue, Wyeth had picked the ap-
ples for a pie, but they had no
0 "Wind from the Sea" shows a
special moment when a long, dry
wind draws itself through lace
curtains. More mysteriously, the
range of squat horizontally
branching dark sinister trees on
the horizon is being pulled back at
a point in the background, as
though some hook inside the can-
vas was drawing the land back in-
to the canvas. "Wind from the
Sea," a moment of true-life sur-
realism in the New England world,
was poet Robert Frost's favorite
picture.
" "Ground Hog Day" is a pic-
ture of slumbering winter logs out-
side the kitchen window in the
white seasonal sunliight. Maga-
zine chatter reports that one rag-
ged-ended logwrapped in a log-
ger's chain metamorphasized in
Wyeth's mind from a sleeping dog.
Near it in the show was displayed
"German Police Dog," a dry brush
and pencil drawing, a study for
the final tempera. The study has
the tough-looking dog thoroughly
sleeping across a bed. The log
shares that sleep, and at least in
the moments Wyeth painted them,
the powerful dog and log were
identical.
" "Teel's Island," t'pical in
style of several Wyeth seside pic-
tures, carries one of the messages
that seems to strike him most pow-
erfully: around him his world is
changing, many forms of life are
ending, forever. The boat has been
drawn up on Henry Teel's place in
late summer, where it seems to be
growing among the plants. Of
course, it, like Henry Teel, may
never go down to sea again.
* "Hay Lodge" is the result of
several frequently used Wyeth
traits: finding life in lofts and
attics; putting two contradicting
types of light and dark energy
in sunlight and indoor gloom;
finding New England boats bizar-
rely landlocked. A gleaming dory
gleaming in daylight has been
placed high in the hay, amid
dark and battered rope and barn
beams.
" "Tenant Farmer" shows sev-
eral other frequently used ele-
ments in the Wyeth style: the
crazy color power of winter white;
the violence in nature; the un-
balanced, sliding effect of run-
ning a heavy building off the side
of a canvas; and titling a picture
for an obscure detail in the mind.
1 freshly-killed deer hangs on a
barren tree, wracked by the same
winter wind that punishes the
branches. The home is old, se-
cure and heavy: its bricks look
like they have been frozen, rather
than mortared, together. The
scene is stuck on top of a hard-
packed cloud of snow.
It is a blatantly personalized
are, sentimental, perhaps over-
sentimental despite its themes of
alienation. Furthermore, it is uni-
fied, storybook art, the adven-
tures of Andrew Wyeth in Chadds
Ford, Pennsylvania, and on the
Maine coast. Here is Wyeth's wife
and dogs, here are his kids and
neighbors. Despite the alienation,
happiness ever after. In an age
of vinyl heroes and bureaucratic
power mongers, Andy and his gang
are fresh and exciting. Despite
the overalls, the New Englanders
each have a touch of Prince Ham-
4-y
-The Art Institute of Chicago
it'ista,, '1Thunder"
let in the Antonioni
the pictures a re simply
after all.
atternooii
AND FOR BETTVER or worse,
Andrew Wyeth is part of an un-
forgettable artistic dynast, N
ell Converse Wyeth, hios fathe
acters: Mohicans, wose n
pirates. N.C. 's characters wer
muscular and lively-.,singing
with 3-D power off the pgesof
boyhood classics: here treads Rob-
in Hood awaiting the sheriff, here
is Long John Silver, perhaps up
to no good.
Andrew was born into a world
of vigorous art and true-life imag-
ination. 'N.C. spouted Shakespeare
as. he doused his children with
castor oil, encouraged them to
set up toy theatres all over the
house and persuaded them well
up into their teens that Santa
Claus did indeed exist," says Time.
But above all, the elder Wyeth
gave them a sense of art and feel-
ing that produced new artistry, a
second-generation dynasty: len-
riette, the eldest child, a painter
and wife of western artist Peter
Hurd; Caroline, a painter; Ann,
a musician who married one of
her father's students, John McCoy;,
Nathaniel, who became a research
engineer for DuPont; and Andrew,
the youngest.
Splashy colorful watercolors
marked Wyeth's first period, one
in which his father still roared
and ruled. But in October, 1945,
N.C. was killed when a train drove
into his car. The freewheclingI
Andy was shattered. What surviv-
ed his father's auto crash was the
artist of a first smashing tempe
"Winter 1946," a picture of a
drab youth running down-almost
from-a barren hill set against a
fluorescent horizon,
WY ET H'S SON James is at least
part of a third generation. He has
had several shows in the east and
rnportedly has bought a Corvette
with some of his earnings. Per-
haps equally superficial, James
has been commissioned by the
Kennedy family to paint a post-
humous portrait of the President.
James may eventually phase out
his father, but in fact Andrew
Wyeth's art has t ken a new di-
rection in less than five years,
since his son's popularity. His
paintings are recently almost life-
size. There are portraits against
simple backgrounds, more color,
more intensity and signs of deep-
er observation. Wyeth appears to
be mellowing in his old enigmas,
becoming joyously resolved to the
people who grew with his art.
The most recent portraits - and
landscapes as well-carry a sad-
ness which earlier might have been
the result of an artist learning to
understand loneliness. Now it
seems rather to show a content-
ment with a lifelong probing of
the human condition.
Wyeth is not an entertainer,
but his fans know Bill Cosby, Bob
Hope and perhaps Mick Jagger.
He is not a political man, but his
fans know Everett Dirksen, Sam
Yorty and General Westmoreland.
He is an artist, in fact, and his
fans get Norman Rockwell and
Salvadore Dali, not to mention
the technicians of op, pop and
super-real. It is as though Wyeth,
out of necessity was posing with
Poe, Tarzan, Monroe, Dylan, Rin-
go and the rest for the group
photo of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely
Hearts Club Band.
ONE ENJOYS Wyeth's paint-
ings, figuratively, aboard Le Roi
Jones' subway, a terrible place to
display anyone's art. At the Chi-
cago Institute, the paintings and
sweltering crowds were packed in
three huge galleries without the
space each group deserved. No-
body except perhaps senile folk
and children can hold on to the
imagery for very long, or at least,
in a vacuum. In New England it-
self, the old homes are being de-
molished and high-tension tn-
tennae are marching across the
' mnpera landscapes. And perhaps
this is as it should be, for certain-
ly the times impose greater con-
cerns than those in Wyeth's art.
But it is because the times
make mere art so difficult, so
c'amped thatathe Wyeth pictures
become valid, more valid than
those of other Americans. The
human condition, which Wyeth
painted so meticulously in his
world, is striking again, and all
the pizazz of advertising or au-
tistic withdrawal of political dis-
illusionment cannot hide it. Those
Wyeth poses, taken from life, are
being struck again, despite the,
railings of black power, the call
to flower power and the Inanities
of Beverly Hillbillies. The mo-
ments Wyeth painted by defini-
tion are gone, but all moments
are not gone. If the style is dif-
ferent, the elements of humanity
are the same. That is why in hot,
crowded galleries a Wyeth picture
can grab an alien viewer and emo-
tionally pull him into the canvas.
SOME QUESTION whether Wy-
eth's art really means anything
or matters. Others ask if that
question matters, still others ask if
any question matters. Hopefully
While these same questions are
asked, the Wyeth canvases can
provide beauty and 'experience
leading toward answers. For those
who caught the show, the paint-
ings did just that.
A
Instant Politics
HALF OF THE BIG TEN student bodies
-generally among the most conserv-
ative-this year elected New Left candi-
dates as student body presidents. But
there has been no evidence that the po-
litical pulse is beating faster on these
campuses; on the contrary, student inter-
est in civil rights, peace and related issues
is less intense, by all reports, than it was
last year. Political "activism," now as yes-
terday, attracts only a minority of stu-
dents-15 per cent at Stanford and the
University of California as shown by one
recent study. The new mood reflects not
a quickening interest in politics but an
impatience with things-as-they-are, a
generalized resentment against being
treated, as it is often expressed, as "IBM
cards" in impersonal knowledge factories.
Surveys have 'shown that this feeling
is nearly twice as prevalent among stu-
dents at the large universities as it is in
smaller colleges, public or private. Even at
Oklahoma State, where Stetsons and
boots are more common than beards, the
students are on a rampage against re-
mote, unresponsive administrative prac-
tices. Frustrated in their attempts to get
the regular campus parties and political
types to "do something" - that is, to
change overnight educational theories
presidents. The same thing happened at
Stanford last year when David Harris, a
bearded New Leftist who modestly esti-
mated his real adherents at 200, was
swept into office in a surge of protest (see
"The Rebel President," The Nation, May
16, 1966).
BUT PROTESTS of this sort, which stem
.from frustration, too often result in
further frustration. David Harris, for
example, resigned at Stanford because he
felt, and quite correctly, that he did not
represent student body opinion and could
not, therefore, provide effective leader-
ship. One of the Big Ten New Leftist
student body presidents resigned for the
same reason. The trouble traces back to
the traditional American impatience with
long-term political planning. It is not this
generation's fault that it shares the na-
tional folk belief in politics as a form of
reflex action-an endless rotation of "ins"
and "outs"-but it is not too early for stu-
dents, and the rest of us, to realize that,
now more than ever, "instant politics" is
a mirage. Today's political problems de-
mand a degree of planning, preparation
and organization, a degree of effort and
commitment and patience, that we have
not brought to nolitics for a long time-
-The Art Institute of Chicago
ANDREW WYETH
wild hill on which her life takes
place. Wyeth became identified
with this one picture more than
any one of the others: every mag-
azine which did a Wyeth repro-.
duced it; Detroit-area markets
stocked prints of it months be-
fore those of other paintings. The
original is exhibited in New York's
Museum of Modern Art, in style
fitting a masterpiece-almost as
an icon.
The emotional punch of "Chris-
tina's World" and the reproduc-
tions would have hurt the show
by out-shouting the other paint-
ings, had it been displayed. In-
stead less popular, obscure and
new works provided a re-introduc-
tion to Wyeth:
* "Distant Thunder," for ex-
ample, is an oft-reproduced pic-
ture of Wyeth's wife, Betsy, and
his dog, Rattler. In the painting,
Betsy, a veteran berry-picker, is
asleep in the meadow when Rattler
is awakened by the muffled rum-
bling of distant thunder on a
sunny afternoon. A reproduction
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