Seven Deadly Sins

 “Gulls are nasty birds, filled with their own jealousies and rivalries." Jamie Wyeth

I had not heard of Wyeth's series of paintings on the Seven Deadly Sins  in which gulls act out each of the vices. Gulls are nasty birds.  Every creature has to make a living, I suppose. Son of Andrew Wyeth and grandson of N.C. Jamie grew up around art and was widely familiar with the work of others before he was out of his teens.  He claims that his series is based on that of Paul Cadmus in the late 40's, paintings which are quite unnerving. They should be, shouldn't they? Cadmus, in turn, based his on Bosch. Bosch captures the horror of the sins, but his figures are too remote from us now to be edifying. The style of them is from another era and we have no impulse to say "Avarice.  Oh dear, that looks like me! I'd best repent and mend my ways." 

They work together, though.  I agree with the idea that art is a conversation, but groan when anyone wants to talk about it. Yes, literature is as well, and all the books in the library talk to each other. I could say so much more, as could all of you, but let's not share that right now, eh? But I will have a go at it in this narrow space. Wyeth's gulls seem selfish and irritating, but not so horrible.  Why should they go to as bad a place as hell for doing what they have to to survive? 

But that's the point though, isn't it?  They aren't that different than us.  These might be the worst aspects of us but it is not a great distance. Cadmus's Seven are unfiltered, and so exaggerated from what we see in our polite worlds that we don't quite take them seriously. Wyeth connects us to them.  These are the realities lurking beneath our everyday sins that we shrug off. Hieronymus Bosch connects us back to a completely different era, and by extension to all the eras of humankind. It was no different.  It is the lot of man.