4 e 3idii4wt &tg 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- Desolation of .. ,_- - , r _ f i r i r .... s . M L . , r i . , WTore OP"nWn Are - 420 MAYNARD ST., ANN ARBOR, MICH. 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 :.. ; . r>' I