At any rate, the bit I wanted to share was that the first time I ever saw “Christina’s World” was through his (many) copies of it. And one of his replicas had a striking difference from the original: a prominent “Burma Shave” sign in the foreground. I suppose he figured that added a touch of “realism” (and humor).

On the subject of Gershwin, this summer we were in Berlin for a couple of months and went to see Porgy and Bess at the Deutsche Oper as performed by the Cape Town Opera company, which was traveling there. The show was performed in English (albeit with heavy South African accents) and included German subtitles. Sommer! Und die Leben ist licht! It was quite a lot to keep up with.

Seeing that music now, seventy years removed from its debut and a cultural lens or two away, it’s easy to see that it’s timeless and immortal; great, strong melodies plucked from the ether.

At the same time, it’s a good thing that there are art purists to champion the unpopular and floggingly innovative — without that stuff, there’d be no progress, and there’d be nothing for popular artists to appear less extreme against in comparison.

We’ve got the print of the dog on the bed, and we like it fine. It looks like one of the rooms in our 1920′s woodframe houses, and reflects the kind of staunch middle class American values that we think defined the World War II generation.

And it looks a hell of a lot better on our wall than a Pollock would.

My wife and I recently received a print of Wyeth’s “Ides of March” from her Aunt, who was a friend of his and would occasionally sit as a model for him at his home in Maine. We also have a print given to my wife from her father, that is at least thirty years old. Coming from California, these paintings definitely capture a feeling of an idyllic east for me, a feeling intertwined with my new extended family and their long history in New England.

Being a musician, my take on your post brings up thoughts of Copeland, Gershwin and Bernstein. All of these composers sat at the intersection of high art and main street commerce. They are often used as “gateway” artists into the world of European classical music, because they are more palatable to modern American ears. I don’t disagree with these tactics, but the accessibility of the music shouldn’t detract from what is actually going on. Each composer has great depths and skill to their work, and all introduced extensive cultural mashup in their work that rival anything by Bartok or Dvorak.

I think when art involves anything too current or familiar, it is to easy to dismiss as pop or commerce. Give it a hundred years, and perhaps the judgment of Wyeth and others will be more focused on the talent and less reactionary to his popularity.