Seven Deadly Sins

Remember Oscar the seagull who used to steal the remains of diner's outdoor meals at our summer get-away in Maine? Well, he has met his match in the gulls that populate Jamie Wyeth's new series of paintings entitled the Seven Deadly Sins. Wyeth, who spends his summers on Monhegan Island in Maine, portrays each of the deadly sins acted out with the seagulls who share his island retreat. They are currently on view at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, PA. where Wyeth spends the rest of the year.

The exhibit is striking not only because of its realism (there is a tape playing that provides background noise of squawking gulls) but also because of the ferocity of the images. Seagulls are true scavengers and Wyeth has done nothing to romanticize their dispositions. There is a video that accompanies the show in which he remarks that many painters portray seagulls as white doves. To him, nothing could be farther from the truth. These are angry, nasty, mean scavengers and all the years he has spend observing them has made him a true scholar of seagulls. He knows his subjects inside and out probably better than they know themselves.

My only complaint with the show is that many of the paintings could represent more than one vice. Anger, pride, envy, and gluttony are close cousins since in these depictions they involve food--the driving force in a seagull's life. It is hard to discern whether or not the seagull chowing down on the lobster above is proud of his accomplishment or merely feeling ravenous. And the spectators could just as easily have been angry or envious of his accomplishments. The painting, by the way, is titled Pride.

Which may be the point. These vices are inches away from each other and very primal in nature--although I am not sure the need for food is as omnipresent in human existence as it is in the gulls' world. Nonetheless, by placing these seagulls within the larger context of a well established subject, long associated with Christian art, Wyeth has taken the gulls out of their natural habitat and made us look at them for what they truly are.

If you get a chance to see this exhibit--it does tour--I highly recommend it. Art that makes you think is always worth seeing.