Andrew Wyeth's achievement is unmatched by other modern American realist painters: he produced canvasses that became American icons, deepening our sense of the possibilities of representational painting in an abstract age. This biography, produced by family friend Richard Meryman, who first wrote about Wyeth for Life magazine in 1964, takes in not only Andrew Wyeth's life but three generations of Wyeths: the peerless illustrator N. C. Wyeth, Andrew's father; Andrew Wyeth; and Jamie, Andrew's son and a successful realist painter in his own right. The "Secret Life" of the title refers in part, of course, to the "Helga" paintings, sketches, drawings, and portraits (many of them in the nude) of Wyeth's neighbor, later his companion and assistant, Helga Testorf. The revelation of the "Helga" series gave the married Wyeth's life, at almost 70, a final dose of drama. This new biography, besides delving deeply into Wyeth's personal life, includes long discussions of almost every Wyeth canvas.


From Publishers Weekly
"They're sticking pins in me!" Wyeth complained in 1986 after the press roasted his furtive and seminude "Helga" paintings. "I'm a has-been." Then 70, he had been an artistic icon since his 20s, and Christina's World, Wyeth's signature canvas, ranked with Whistler's portrait of his mother and Wood's American Gothic as national images. Meryman (Mank: The Wit, World, and Life of Herman Mankiewicz) bases his biography on interviews over many years with Wyeth, his family and his inner circle. Bare of printed sources and dependent on dialogue, the book strikingly evokes three generations of a talented, idiosyncratic family, its middle generation the progeny of a larger-than-life artist (N.C. Wyeth) insecure to the end about his worth. Andrew Wyeth (b. 1917) himself appears as a bundle of contradictions?modest and vain, outgoing and secretive, moved by anger as well as by love, a painter of pitiless pictures as well as postcard scenes. To his biographer, Wyeth's studies of rustic loneliness and decay accomplish what Edward Hopper achieved for 20th-century urban life. There are 75 b&w and 16 color photos here. Wyeth wanted a "tough book," writes Meryman, not one in which his works were "reverentially placed on the page surrounded by white borders"; he wanted "the excitement of pictures bled off the edges and carried across the gutter." The artist should be pleased with the result. Readers certainly will be. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The popularity of Andrew Wyeth's art and wide interest in his life will guarantee that this first book-length biography will appeal to a large number of readers. Former Life magazine writer Meryman (Andrew Wyeth, Abrams, 1991) combines his sympathy for Wyeth with his readable prose to create a friendly portrait that considers the artist's personal life, his artwork, and his reception by the art world and the public. Each chapter is paired with a specific painting, reproduced as a color plate. Numerous photographs, quotations, and anecdotes from Wyeth's extended family flesh out the portrayal. There will be a demand for this book in both general and specialized collections.?Kathryn Wekselman, Univ. of Cincinnati Lib., OhioCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Barbara MacAdam
Mr. Meryman's story of the life, nurture and care of an artist and of an eccentric, individualistic American family is a fascinating, informal historical document.


Book Description
"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 of research, 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.


About the Author
Richard Meryman, the son of a painter, worked for twenty-three years as a reporter, correspondent, editor, and staff writer for the original Life magazine. A freelance writer since 1972, he is the author of several books, including Hope: A Loss Survived; Broken Promises, Mended Dreams; and Andrew Wyeth (1968), a major book of the artist's paintings. He first met Wyeth when he wrote an article about him for Life in 1964, and has kept in touch with him ever since. Meryman and his wife live in New York.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Richard Meryman's special entr￯﾿ﾽe into the world of Andrew Wyeth (he's been a friend of the Wyeth clan since the 1960s) has allowed him to write a personal and moving account of a notoriously private artist's life and career. Through the analysis of one or two paintings per chapter, the author arrives at conclusions about the aesthetic choices Wyeth made and the emotional impetus for the creation of such famous works as "Christina's World" and the legendary Helga paintings. With photos from the author's private collection, as well as reproductions of Wyeth's art in color and black and white.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"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 andpeople of Maine and Pennsylvania.

Based on 30 years of research, 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.

Author Biography: Richard Meryman, the son of a painter, worked for twenty-three years as a reporter, correspondent, editor, and staff writer for the original Life magazine. A freelance writer since 1972, he is the author of several books, including Hope: A Loss Survived; Broken Promises, Mended Dreams; and Andrew Wyeth (1968), a major book of the artist's paintings. He first met Wyeth when he wrote an article about him for Life in 1964, and has kept in touch with him ever since.

Meryman and his wife live in New York.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Deeply human, insightful and revelatory... A signal contribution to the understanding of not just the artist Andrew Wyeth but the man.  — J. Carter Brown, Director Emeritus, National Gallery of Art

David McCullough

This is a superb, much-needed biography of a brilliant, strange, angry, fay, secretive, ultimately winsome and worthy man, an authentic giant of American art whose great life-work will now take on even greater meaning.  — David McCullough, author of Truman

Justin Kaplan

...[a] triumphant and powerfully structured story... I am impressed by the quality and intensity.  — Justin Kaplan, author of Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain