Andrew Wyeth: A Spoken Self-portrait

This carefully-rendered portrayal of an important American painter feels like spending an afternoon in the late artist's home. Former Life editor Meryman has edited decades of recordings of conversations with the artist, his family and closest friends. The result is a fully realized picture of the man, the environment, and family that influenced him, and the people who populated his paintings. His wife Betsy recounts the electricity of their first meeting as well as insights into some of Wyeth's most important paintings; his siblings describe the creative atmosphere fostered by Wyeth's father, also a painter, and the intense training he bequeathed to a young Andrew; Wyeth himself discusses his sorrow over his father's tragic death and the paintings which helped him grieve. Besides these biographical insights, there are long passages describing, in his own words, Wyeth's relationship to abstraction%E2%80%94though considered a realist, he saw his work as kindred to that of the abstractionists%E2%80%94and to other major artists of the day. This book is a rare depiction of an artist that succeeds in bringing across the sense of the man, as well as the master of his craft. Color illus. (Nov.)