"A revelation. No one will ever view Andrew Wyeth's apparently tranquil
works the same way again after reading this vivid and astonishing
portrait of the turbulent, driven man who paints them. Richard Meryman
has written a wonderful book."
-- Geoffrey C. Ward
At its most fundamental level, this stunning and unique biography
describes a distinguished painter's enterprise of transmitting emotion
onto a flat surface. It explores all the factors that have combined to
create Andrew Wyeth -- his childhood in a hothouse of creativity; his
hypersensitivity; his formidable wife; his identification with people
marginalized and misunderstood -- all which have made him an American
icon. In the process, his realist works in watercolor and tempera,
including the famous "Christina's World, " have gained him a special and
secure niche in the history of American art.
The book is a portrait of obsession -- how single-mindedness has
affected Wyeth's relationships and transformed his world into a realm of
secrecy and fervid imagination. Those who read this book will never look
at Wyeth's work as they did before. It reveals the artist's dark depths,
as well as the ruthless, angry, child/man fantasist who paints the basic
brutalities of existence -- death and madness --that vibrate eerily
beneath his pictures' calm surfaces.
Richard Meryman's narrative is almost novelistic, with its
larger-than-life characters and subplots: the tragedy of C.C. Wyeth;
Betsy Wyeth's campaign for independence and individuality; the byzantine
15-year-long drama of the Helga paintings; the eccentric and creative
Wyeth clan; and the idiosyncratic land and people of Maine and
Pennsylvania.
Based on 30 years ofresearch, frequent visits and countless
conversations with the artist, his family, friends, admirers and
critics, "Andrew Wyeth: A Secret Life" is the only book about the man
and the artist that gets behind his carefully guarded screen, tells the
full story of his life and reveals his complex personality and the
motivations for his paintings.
