Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth: A Conversation with Andrew Wyeth

The subject

Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) was among the most popular and most debated American painters of the twentieth century — beloved by the public, often dismissed by critics as sentimental, and defended by others as a rigorous, even severe realist. His art circled obsessively around two rural places and the people in them.

The book

Two Worlds of Andrew Wyeth is essentially an edited transcript. Thomas Hoving, the Metropolitan Museum's director and a gifted interviewer, drew Wyeth out over five days of taping, organizing the conversation around the Pennsylvania Kuerner farm and the Maine Olson farm. The talk unpacks the making of specific pictures, including Christina's World and Groundhog Day, and is illustrated throughout with the relevant works and studies.

How to read it

Read it as primary source. The interview format lets Wyeth explain his intentions directly, which is invaluable given how much critics have projected onto him; it also means the book takes the artist largely at his own estimation. Approached that way, it's a rare, candid window on how the paintings were actually built.

For more context

Hoving later returned to Wyeth in his coverage of the Helga pictures controversy, another episode in the painter's guarded public life.

Sources

• Amazon listing
• Goodreads
• Google Books