Andrew Wyeth July 1917 – January 2009
every once in awhile you meet someone who really kicks you in the gut….has a lasting influence ……someone you know is just a little more special than everyone else…. sure, all men are created equal, but some seem more equal than others….
the minute i met Andrew Wyeth , i knew he was such a man….or , should i say in reality, a child…..or childlike at best…..impish, precocious, a prankster, and having zero sense of the so called “real world”, Andy struck me immediately as an artist who lived in his own self made world….and that is what he painted…he painted his imagination….he painted the world around him in Chads Ford , Pennsylvania ….mostly landscapes with characters from his “real life” (neighbors, friends, family) thrown in because those were the folks he knew…. Andy did not venture far from home….he saw no need….
back in the early nineties i had an assignment from National Geographic to photograph Andrew Wyeth, one of America’s foremost painters…..i convinced the editors i needed to shoot this story in black & white… my reasoning was that the Wyeth paintings, which would certainly dominate the article, were so monochromatic that anything i did in chrome color of Wyeth and his family would clash on pages of the magazine….so with my M6 and some Tri-X i set out to photograph the man who everyone said did not want to be photographed…..it was reported that he absolutely hated to have his picture taken…and so he did….in my several weeks of befriending the Wyeth family i quite literally do not have more than a few rolls of film with Andy actually in the frame….the rest of the family yes, Andy no …..even when my son Bryan and i managed to get invited to the Wyeth family Thanksgiving dinner, Andy remained shy… friendly, but avoiding being photographed at every turn….and his mystery subject, and neighbor, Helga Testorf had never been photographed by anyone, ever (please note the Helga Paintings)…..my skills as a photographer were totally secondary to the skills necessary to try to get “inside” and just make any kind of photograph at all of the elusive Wyeth….
shooting Wyeth almost made me feel like a “paparazzi” of sorts….i always wait ….waiting is what i do…but, waiting for Andy Wyeth was well beyond anything i had ever experienced before….at some point i realized Andy was playing with me…he wanted to see how i would react to his elusive nature….he was testing me ….he wanted to see how bad i really wanted my pictures… so, i was bound and determined not to give up…never show frustration….never complain…and never go away either!!!
some days i would be invited to his studio….well, sort of….i had to wait outside in an empty room…for hours in an empty room….. i waited… trying to imagine what in hell he was thinking leaving me outside with absolutely nothing to do but HOPE that at some point he would invite me all the way in to the “inner sanctum”….. one day when i was just about to go crazy (and the editors at Natgeo were wondering when i was going to take some pictures), Andy came out and started showing me some toy soldiers he had sitting in the window (he collected toy soldiers)….at that moment , off to the side, suddenly there was standing shyly the heretofore un-photographed Helga…she would not come near Andy or me and was just barely barely barely in the frame if i “slammed” Andy way to the left and her way to the right…there was no time for good composition , or to think, or to play with light, or anything at all…it was just “take the friggin picture Harvey”….. i took two frames and she was gone….. i mean gone…..
after several weeks, an eternity , i did manage to have enough photographs of Andrew Wyeth and his family for a piece in the magazine….and in the process Andy befriended me….i swear i only because he saw me as a bit playful myself…and he did hang one of my photographs i had brought as a gift on his living room wall….
at 91 Andrew Wyeth died yesterday morning….right there at home where he belonged….with his family and neighbors gathered around….Andy did not get the recognition as an artist that some felt he deserved….he was not hip…not “cool” at a time when the “other Andy” (Andy Warhol) was the darling of the jet set and the elite social New York art critics….but frankly, i do not think Andy himself cared much one way or the other….he lived the life of an artist…and he painted exactly what he wanted ….on his own time and in his own way….
in my mind now i see Andy as a young boy, running across those farm fields he loved… hmmmm, is Andy really gone, or is he just playing a trick on us and hiding in the barn???
-David Alan Harvey
“.Andy did not get the recognition as an artist that some felt he deserved…”
As a painter I can say only that we see now that this kind of artist will have the place they deserved soon.
After a decades of abstraction art everything turns into figural art. The place where we humanists belongs. Where human is in a center.
David….
i just wrote about Wyeth this morning and also posted your photograph…….and was going to call u….but i thought u might be asleep…now, taking a break from writing, off to clean up….will call u in 1 hr…i just posted this magnificent photograph here this morning ;)))…we’re on the same wave lenght….here is what i wrote for burn this morning
good bye indeed, but he lives on inside each of us…and most definitely inside of me and my life…
hugs
bob
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and then, disappear’d and moving, like a thin’d skirt of curtain across the face of an open window, goes Wyeth….
for whatever reason, and all reasons, I have loved Wyeth….have never quite understood the disdain blanketed upon him by the modern art world, but maybe i have too personalized his work, since it has been apart of my own life, my own childhood. As an artist convinced of the necessity of introspection and the need to sharpen this, the need to pulley over the hermetic and abstract winding of images and words as a way to speak about that which remains nearly unspeakable, my entire life as a writer and a reader, my life as a maker of things and carnivorous nibbler of things, my heart has always belonged to the modern, to eschew easy dilectics or easily understood objects, for all that is wonderous and dark in this world. Is it possible to love joyce and perec, beckett and kathy acker, kline, rothko,, beuys, duschamp, viola and still need Wyeth. For me, the answer is of course. Maybe it is the childhood that i have not yet been able to transcend. I grew up in love with Wyeth and wobbled at the pull of my parents inside the rooms of the Brandywine museum, in love with the strange and singularly personal paintings of wyeth since i was a kid and long long before Helga splashed across the coffee tables of the country, the beginning not at all Christina’s world, but the gold and austere landscapes, the haunted and unmistakably ghost-licked interiors, the algebra of loss and recalculation….though beuys, eventually, would be come one of my heros, just as those twin giacos (giacometti and giacomelli), just as Antunes would occupy my heart, rothko the moments i felt alone, pollack when i was drinking and at a loss to express anything but violent, earthy gesture, still there was always those landscpaes, those interiors, those family dramas of silence and earth and white wind and black hares….and still, for whatever reason, the paintings, both the egg temperas and the watercolors, resonate inside me….maybe it is obdurate arrogance, maybe it’s the inability to jettison my childhood wonder and started surprise as those paintings, but a part of me feel bereft with his death….his politics, as depicted by others and often his embrace of ‘for america” politicians, left me confused, one thing is for certain, the paintings till come back to me in dreams…he painted my dream life, o r a part of my dream life…is it possible to tell that my dreams were composed of both his interiors and experteriors just as Duchamps “Etant donnés” live inside my head too…..
a part of my childhood gone…the peeling away of all things….
What is the purpose of Burn….what is the purpose of what each of us in our own way sets a course to investigate, reflect, argue, auger, and place small made objects up for viewing….
at least for me, it is twined….all those things which speak to us of what we are….no matter the course or language or appearance of them…
i feel grieved with his death, just as i feel a boney hurt when thinking of Wilmarth, or beuys or joyce writing his life out when the world turned aside….
all those things….the interior and the exterior…and how fucking arrogant we are to think that we know….
a simple picture from Editor Harvey….and then the goodbyes which stay with us, long after the disappearing….
that is, for me, the language of what shall remain….
http://tinyurl.com/8zz99a
running
A lovely tribute. And you brought back to me a nostalgic time. Thanks. Charlene
P.S.
and David, i have always LOVED this photograph…even more than the shot with Helga or the shots by HCB…because for me, it captures Wyeth as I think of him…still the quiet child, listening to his father’s NC’s stories, of which his illustrations were part of growing up for many of us: Stevenson, Cooper, dickens…and there he is, the child, strong and fragile, caught in his room imaging the world around…those magnificent soil-stained, egg-yolk clutched hands and the face, the face of a Maine island carved by wind…as i tried to write this morning (and above), i have never understood the critical piss-off he received, then again, i have a ridiculously emotional loyalty to those whove opened my life….and before school and university and before seeing all the moderns that broke my heart and life wide open, Wyeth’s haunting begain: he taught me what it meant to see the invisible in the cornices of room, what it meant to listen to the shape of the land beneath the weight of an earthen swept sky, what it meant to be alone and solitary and to express that in the gesture of egg yoke and color and water and time….and i’ve never understood his work as ‘realism’ but as hermetic and abstract and emotional as telling stories to yourself as you walk through the country, as you fall fast to bed…if the modern elevated the interior and the individual to olympic heights, Wyeth for me still stands as the individual expression of a life and land that, no matter how often charted remains a mystery…that, for me, he is considered an ‘american’ painter seems unimportant so much as he, for me, is a painter of reconiliation and loss…our small selves against the larger body of land and time and what is gone….
in the end, people’s politics vanish, but for the way they have carved out their lives….
our legacy….
his loyalty to his vision and to those around him, at least for me, is what matters…and that there too will be a young girl or young boy, as i went my father used to drive us to Brandywine, who will be picked and poked and ensorcelled by these paintings, long after we knew all that surrounded his life, that is the testament to the life lived….
thanks for sharing your tribute
hugs
running
b
**Beautiful memories… a beautiful story…. Andy was my friend’s uncle (Pia)… I think the art in her house, when I was younger, influenced me…. wonderful family, wonderful man…. I wish him well on his journey… **
Sounds like someone who knew what he wanted, and was able to stick to it :)
Nice tribute David. The passing of a true American icon. There is something in Wyeth’s work that captures the strange mix of puritanism and reverie that this country was founded on. His work is deeply “American”…
Perhaps he didn’t get the recognition he deserved in his lifetime; his work, for better or for worse, was not “of its time”, and was overshadowed by the fads and hype of 20th century abstract art. But at the same time, his aesthetic has been hugely influential in the photographic world, and and his images have embedded themselves deeply into the collective American psyche–moreso than any other American painter I can think of, other than perhaps Hopper. I believe his images will endure long after Pollock and Warhol–whose names and reputations always preceded their art–become chapters in Art History books.
my father, whose father was a seaman, a captain for Sun Oil and at sea for most of his childhood, who loved to sail and the water, who taught me everything that I have become as a father myself, used to take us to The Brandywine museum….and here, was his favorite painting, a copy of which hung on the wall of his office at home and his office at work, a painting that still stays in my gut evertime i look at a window, and it is the painting i thought of the first time i saw David’s photograph…..
http://tinyurl.com/92w44l
and it was, above all the iconic pictures he made (christina’s world, trodden weed, the Helga Suite, the bedroom pictures, the Chadd’s forth landscapes, the Maine scapes, the hook in the roof), this picture that i’ve thought about all morning….
in this picture, for me, is the life of each of us…
David,
As I read about Wyeth’s passing in this morning’s paper, I thought about your assignment and relationship with him. As a working photographer, you have a lifetime treasure of photographic relationships with many, both famous and infamous. Sure, you’re getting paid on assignment, but your best reward is in the experience. Thank you for sharing your story.
Mike
PS: check my blog for Old Christmas this year.
What Mike has said here, echo my own thoughts. Thank you for sharing David!
– Jeremy
A telling portrait and story of one of my favorites.
After the debacle of Hemingway’s Across the River and into the Trees, someone asked William Faulkner about what he thought of the critical slaughtering the book had taken. Faulkner, in his usual tangled prose, wrote that some writers resembled wolves only when they were in a pack and that without the pack, those writers were just another dog. Faulkner then listed Hemingway’s works, showing that Hemingway did not need the pack; he was a wolf with or without them. Hemingway, of course, took it the wrong way; he thought that Faulkner was calling him just another dog, but then, Hemingway never really got Faulkner. Faulkner, on the other hand, read Hemingway pretty well, knowing him for both the great writer and complete jerk he could be at times.
And what has this to do with Andrew Wyeth? Wyeth was never part of the pack, never part of the game that jacks some artistic reputations up or tosses others under the bus. Jackson Pollock’s artistic reputation, for example, will not go down in our lifetimes, not because of the intrinsic merit of his work, but because the millionaires who lined up to buy Pollock’s productions in the 1980’s and 90’s will hardly admit to themselves or to others that they spent over a million dollars in order to hang a drop cloth in a place of honor in their homes. Wyeth, by contrast, did not need the sycophancy of Warhol’s Factory or the approval of the critics and their theories of what modern art should look like; he had a vision and he was going to be true to that vision. Sooner or later, everyone else would catch up with where he was going. The critics and the pack artists will never admit they were wrong, of course; like the CIA, they are never wrong–there are just times when they are not as right as they thought they were.
I grew up with his famous Christina’s World hanging on my wall, after my mom and I went to the Detroit Institute of the Arts to see the Helga Pictures. I was 7, and we stood and stared at the braids and wheat together…I never really knew much about him beyond Christina and Helga, her golden hair luminescent and wispy in Farm Road. A beautiful tribute to a man who may not have “received his dues” but whose amber hues and subjects clearly sunk in to many of us.
DAVID.
Eva’s comment above “Sounds like someone who knew what he wanted, and was able to stick to it :)”
also rings true for you. Thanks for sharing your “behind the scenes” story and showing us what tenacity is all about.
A beautiful eulogy Akaky. Thank you.
I remember the Nat Geo essay David; a photograph takes you back so easily. I look at my photographs and I remember the moment, the camera, lens, film etc. And I remember the subject. Memories.
david,
about a year ago i met “road trips” thanks to Andrew Wyeth. I was reading that old issue of Natgeo and wanted to know more about the author of those beautiful pictures. Then i posted a message telling you about that and you very kindly told the story of that assignment and of your encounter with AW. I still think the Wyeth portrait you are publishing here is one of your best photographs, for me one of the best portraits ever.
Thanks for remembering him here.
cheers
guido
Great story & tribute, David- thanks for sharing.
DAVID,
Thanks for sharing your moving and touching story of Andy. Although I knew of him, this made me want to learn more about the man as well as his work. If anyone could eventually be patient enough to get the right photograph this had to be you. The face of Andy says a lot about the man that he seemed to have been… beautiful strong human face!
Eric
Your writing is as to the point as your photographs are. Bold. Colourful. Succinct.
I’m thinking he was as lucky to have met you as you were to meet him.
Quality.
Nice, Akaky. You nailed it.
David, thank you for giving us a glimpse of the man behind the paintings. Your portrait of him looking out the dirty window with his hand pressed against the glass is exceptionally appropriate for this man who did his best to keep the outer world OUT and his inner world IN. Only through his paintbrush and precious egg tempera–a very demanding medium, by the way–was Andrew Wyeth willing to share himself. His vision will live on.
Fantastic. Made him more alive to me than any of the pieces I’ve read in the NYT elsewhere.
beautiful.
A sensitive and touching tribute David. Beautiful words, powerfully telling image.
Frankly, I would have preferred the picture without the watermarks…. Please…
I feel young and stupid, but I don’t know who this man is. However, I love his hand, I love it so much. It so sincere like it doesn’t belong to the expression on his face.
I’m very touched that David always wait… wait …and wait to take pictures with patience…
and moved that Andrew Wyeth had painted one object for a long time (about 250 pieces of Helga for 15 years)…He didn’t need to go far ..He always had painted near him…family, neighbor and nature..
Thank you very much for sharing such a beatiful tribute.
great tribute.
dx
nb.
in london.
anyone available to meet, my number – 07596 137290.. david@bophoto.co.uk
so far ben and paul are in.
DAH – emailed you.
Just sent you an email, David Bowen. From Wednesday’s good for me. A few jars perhaps?
JOHN…
saturday..office closed..had to go with the story…will fix on monday of course…
cheers, david
The mostly painful and yet playful collaboration between two kindred spirits resulted in this iconographic portrait of Andrew Wyeth, that will live for all time.
and it made a hell of a ‘sea story’…..good on you mate.
M.Dog
Touching words for a man that deserved it. Artists have a special sensibility and definitely David’s pictures of him transmit that sensibility too.
Thanks for sharing the story and my deep recognition to Andy Wyeth.
Love
Ana
….. goodbye Andy ….
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=1e0EQlQXoEo
Hi David,
Read your warm tribute to A. Wyeth and was touched by your memories. Causing me to remember my 14 year old high school pal – Troy Kaichen from Cushing Maine. Sponsored by the generous Andrew Wyeth Troy was able to attend our school. Wondering what happened to Troy I Googled… “Troy Kaichen” and found this…
TIME magazine 12/27/1963. Article “Andy’s World”
“In the Studio. Wyeth will retreat to his studio near the old family home where he was brought up. He hates to be watched in his studio—except by dogs and kids. The William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum in Rockland, Me., has recently bought an essay by Troy Kaichen, a literate Gushing boy, who knows Wyeth well. It describes Wyeth at work.
“The studio of Andrew Wyeth the Painter contains nothing else but what he’s working on,” wrote Troy. “In the center of the room sits Mr. Wyeth with a large easel in front of him. Every once in a while Mr. Wyeth gets up and walks to a mirror hanging on the wall. The first time he did this I asked him why. He answered, ‘For some reason you can see the picture more clearly in the mirror than you can just looking at it.’ Mr. Wyeth stepped aside and I looked into the mirror myself. Sure enough the picture was much brighter and clearer.
“Mr. Wyeth went back to his painting….””
After reading your memory… waiting for hours outside the Studio… I thought you would appreciate what it was like to be on the inside from a kid’s perspective. A Mirrored perspective…..ummm… now that something to comtemplate.
I truly am enjoying reading “Burn”….Thoughtful – Provocative – Irreverent – Appreciative… a Mirror that will make our understanding more clearer and brighter – why would I expect anything different…
Thanks for sharing and Cheers!
Win Scudder
For most of the 1980s I spent my non-work time in the English seaside resort of Blackpool (shown here with the addition of the last three photographs). I used the resort as a training ground for honing my street photography skills: rather like a musician who practices his scales; I practiced my photographic scales here.
I finally felt that I had a body of work that could be published. I approached the Independent On Sunday magazine (IOP) as they had a reputation of using photography to good effect. My essay was, tentatively, accepted; and publication “should be in the Spring: keep shooting during the winter months and send us anything useful”. At the end of Spring my essay had still not being published. Weeks later I came home from work for lunch and found my portfolio: – tens years in the making, propped against the door in a brown envelope.
I telephoned IOP and was told, sorry, but due to the economic downturn (this isn’t the first one, I believe that the first one was when the Visigoths sacked Rome – Black Whatever Day) all non-staff photography was being rejected.
Now I’m not bitter. O.k. I have a Voodoo-doll called IOP into which I stick very long needles but here is the point of this rant: in the next issue of the IOP their was an article about the Top Ten Toasters. I had to think that my ten years of effort was better than Ten Toasters.
Today I bought a copy of IOP. Page 65 of The New Review shows the Top Ten Singles, Hardbacks, Albums etc. but page 46 shows one of my favorite articles: “How I Met”.
This week the duo was Pop artist Peter Blake (76) (He of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover fame) and Gavin Turk (41) artist, who each met at Charles Saatchi’s (1977) exhibition Sensation.
In this article, Gavin tells of when Peter declares that he has “retired” – at a time when he was doing “more shows and work than ever. But what he meant was slightly different. Having been slightly political with his decisions and holding grudges – an attitude that didn’t necessarily do him any favours – he decided that it didn’t matter any more. That if he was going to do something or make something he was just going to do it.”.
Rather like Andrew Wyeth don’t you think?
Perhaps we should all “retire” and forget about the “market” and “style” etc. and just concentrate on photography. Thank you Andrew.
Mike.
without wanting to seem insensitive, which i certainly am not..
probably over sensitive actually..
but.. (hate that word)
LONDON BURN MEET>
Hello petteri, joe, paul, paul, ben, and hopefully another david, joe and ben for balance.
Another petteri might be asking too much.
So from the looks of it everyone is about on tuesday or Wednesday for a BURN drink or two apart from joe, who is about on Tuesday night.
I could be up for two london BURN meetings.. So all.. Please.. Thoughts on where and Wednesday or Tuesday .. Or Wednesday and Tuesday.. And then we are sorted.
Much respect
anyone else interested in drinks in london this tuesday or wednesday please get in touch.
david@bophoto.co.uk
NB> just has email from the esteemed ben.. and the highly thought joe..
TUESDAY is looking prime.. paul(s) and petteri – can you accomidate that?
The Angel Pub – 61, St. Giles High Street, Soho, London, WC2H 8LE
nearest station is Tottenham Court road on the central and northern line (charing cross branch).
google map here: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=WC2H+8LE&spn=0.005,0.02&hl=en <http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=WC2H+8LE&spn=0.005,0.02&hl=en >
8pm
see you there.
Really a man in his own league.. if ever you get the opportunity, spend an afternoon in the Wyeth Museum in Farnsworth, maine http://www.farnsworthmuseum.org/wyeth/wyeth.html
Ah..also. Humble Arts Foundation has just released The Collector’s Guide to Emerging Art Photography, and I am one of 163 photographers included..please take a look.
http://humbleartsfoundation.org/publications/index.html
If you are a PE or such you can receive a complimentary copy..
Congratulations! Didn’t know about the Humble Arts Foundation, but now I do. Thanks!
Great post David! Didn’t know about Andy before, but this post made me interested in his work. Very interesting stuff and can I say so, very photographical paintings.
Cheers
very photographical paintings?…yes in some ways we can say so. But if we want to see at things the other way around, i’d rather say i’m sure some american landscape photographers looked at Wyeth’s work and learnt something from him. I have some names in mind, can anyone here quote some photographers whose work suggests Andrew Wyeth’s paintings?
Guido,
Yes, I’m sure they did!
Fabulous news, Erica. You deserve it!
Congrats Erica…. I am still very anxious to see your new work… Will we be able to see it soon?
Cheers,
Eric
I am so glad to finally get to your blog and read your memory of AW. From my earliest appreciation of art and throughout my career as a photographer/artist I have had AW on the top of my list. Thank you for writing something about him; thank you for sharing your personal memories.