Andrew Wyeth, “Wash House”
The Oxford Dictionary of English defines “mundane” as “lacking interest or excitement” and “of this earthly world rather than a heavenly or spiritual one”. Regarding the first definition, we might not expect of something mundane much to pay attention to, such that it might yield something of delight. Concerning the second, the Christian might retort, “There’s no such thing.” Everything is created and sustained by God, so we can toss the second definition for our purposes. Or perhaps we might rephrase it: “Earthly and perhaps uninteresting but pointing to spiritual and heavenly realities” (Ps. 19.1).
And if we do this, our revised second definition will reflect back on the first, and may provoke us to wonder whether there might not be more to mundane things than first greets the eye.
Other words suggest themselves: everyday, quotidian, ordinary, common, workaday. Mundane things matter, but mainly because they allow more important things to occur. Washing our clothes is a mundane activity—hardly the stuff of poetry or song.
Unless, of course, washing clothes caught Andrew Wyeth’s attention and his eye for beauty in everyday, ordinary things.
Witness his painting, “Wash House”:
Nothing about this building is particularly memorable. A simple outbuilding with a single window, connected to another building by clothes lines. In Andrew Wyeth’s day, such scenes were not unusual. They were merely mundane. Taken for granted. Like the people who worked in them.
But Wyeth draws out the beauty of this scene, even to suggesting that the wash house is a connecting point between the green earth and the mysterious sky, like an ancient standing stone.
The straight lines in the painting suggest uprightness, sturdiness, and even dignity. The white paint—brightened, not withered by the sun—stands out in commanding relief against the only other prominent colors, green and gray. The clothes lines are empty, indicating that no laundry was being done this day. Was it the Sabbath? Even a wash house deserves a rest.
The beauty and dignity of the house beautify and lend dignity to the people who work here, faithfully transforming things rumpled and ruined and reeking into that which is clean, fresh, neat, and ready for use again. All legitimate work has dignity. Through the work God gives us we participate in restoring to goodness the world He has reconciled to Himself through Jesus Christ.
All work matters, and the work we’ve been given to do is greater than the job at which we work. We must neither despise our work nor take any of it for granted. Instead, doing all things heartily as unto the Lord, we take up all our work, no matter how ordinary or routine, with a view to bringing out the beauty of the Lord Who sanctifies us and our work for His glory.
Such an interpretation doubtless goes beyond Wyeth’s intended meaning, but not, I feel sure, by far. There is beauty in work and mystery in mundane things. Wyeth understood this, saw it all around him, and portrayed it in many of his best paintings. Like Andrew Wyeth, we need to pay attention to mundane things, for the beauty and the mystery to which they direct us.
T. M. Moore