Andrew Wyeth: In Retrospect

This retrospective of American artist Andrew Wyeth’s career coincides with the centennial of his birth and an exhibition organized by the Brandy Wine River Museum of Art in Pennsylvania and the Seattle Art Museum. Curators Junker and Lewis, along with several contributing authors, explore the defining periods of Wyeth’s personal and artistic development. Early influences of note include Wyeth’s upbringing in a household that valued creative, unstructured play; the specter of WWI in the work of his father, artist N.C. Wyeth; and his father’s premature death, the result of a train accident. Essays address Wyeth’s focus on rural Maine and Pennsylvania, as well as the artist’s preoccupation with two families—the Kuerners and the Olsons, Christina Olson being the subject of his best-known work, Christina’s World. Wyeth’s interests in painting African-American subjects, outsider figures, and the solitude of rural America set the artist apart from his contemporaries, as does his integration of uncanny elements into otherwise realist works. Discussions of Wyeth’s erotic portraiture and his muses further contrast the artist’s “underground” identity with his more-public persona. With many paintings reproduced on full-page spreads, this is a welcome addition to a Wyeth library. Color illus. (June)