Liberal Arts Blog — Andrew Wyeth “The Helga Paintings” — The Atomic Bomb Metaphor
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Today’s Topic: Andrew Wyeth “The Helga Paintings” — The Atomic Bomb Metaphor
Until this morning, Andrew Wyeth was synonymous with “Christina’s World.” Not any more. My nephew Sean (thank you) included three paintings by Wyeth in his latest blog post and they so gripped my soul I just had to do a little poking around to learn more about them. I was not disappointed. For example, I discovered the claim by renowned art historian Robert Hughes that the “Helga paintings” were the “greatest and perhaps the defining art world hype of the 1980s.” And, if you have a lot of stamina, don’t miss the story of Wyeth’s wife Betsy (final link). Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
BRAIDS (1977) so much pent-up emotion, I searched for a metaphor, how about atomic bomb?
1. “Helga “Testy” Testorf was a neighbor of Wyeth’s in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and over the course of fifteen years posed for Wyeth indoors and out of doors, nude and clothed, in attitudes that reminded writers of figures painted by Botticelli and Edouard Manet. To John Updike her body “is what Winslow Homer’s maidens would have looked like beneath their calico.” (Wikipedia, first link below)”
2. “Born in Germany, Helga entered a Prussian Protestant convent chosen by her father in 1955. After becoming seriously ill she left the convent and lived in Mannheim, where she studied to be a nurse and a masseuse. In 1957, she met John Testorf, a German-born, naturalized American citizen, whom she married in 1958. By 1961 they were living in Philadelphia, where she worked in a tannery, and they soon moved to Chadds Ford. There she raised a family of four children, and acted as caretaker to farmer Karl Kuerner, an elderly neighbor who was a friend and model for Wyeth.”
3. “Wyeth asked Testorf to model for him in 1971, and from then until 1985 he made 45 paintings and 200 drawings of her, many of which depicted her nude. The sessions supposedly were a secret even to their spouses. The paintings were stored at the home of his student, neighbor and good friend, Frolic Weymouth.”
REFUGE (1985) — the last in the series, an unusually long relationship between a painter and a model
1. “Explaining the series, Wyeth said, “The difference between me and a lot of painters is that I have to have a personal contact with my models. … I have to become enamored. Smitten. That’s what happened when I saw Helga.” He described his attraction to “all her German qualities, her strong, determined stride, that Loden coat, the braided blond hair”.
2. “Art historian John Wilmerding wrote, “Such close attention by a painter to one model over so long a period of time is a remarkable, if not singular, circumstance in the history of American art”.
3. For art critic James Gardner, Testorf “has the curious distinction of being the last person to be made famous by a painting.”
LOVERS (1981) — the scandal, the sale of the collection in 1986, its much-criticized exhibition of 1987
1. “Although Wyeth denied that there had been a physical relationship with Testorf, the secrecy surrounding the sessions and public speculation of an affair created a strain in the Wyeths’ marriage.”
2. “Well after the paintings were finished, Testorf remained close to Wyeth and helped care for him in his old age. In a 2007 interview, when Wyeth was asked if Helga was going to be present at his 90th birthday party, he said, “Yeah, certainly. Oh, absolutely,” and went on to say, “She’s part of the family now. I know it shocks everyone. That’s what I love about it. It really shocks ‘em.”
3. “In 1986, Philadelphia publisher and millionaire Leonard E.B. Andrews (1925–2009) purchased almost the entire collection, preserving it intact… The works were exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in 1987 and in a nationwide tour. There was extensive criticism of both the 1987 exhibition and the subsequent tour. The show was “lambasted” as an “absurd error” by John Russell and an “essentially tasteless endeavor” by Jack Flam, coming to be viewed by some people as “a traumatic event for the museum.” The curator, Neil Harris, labeled the show “the most polarizing National Gallery exhibition of the late 1980s,” himself admitting concern over “the voyeuristic aura of the Helga exhibition.”
NB: “The tour was criticized after the fact because, after it ended, the pictures’ owner sold his entire cache to a Japanese company, a transaction characterized by Christopher Benfey as “crass.”
FOOTNOTE — ROBERT HUGHES — “The Great Hype — When Helga Fooled Us All” (2015)
1. “I remember exactly when and where I first heard about the Helga pictures. It was August 6, 1986, at ten in the morning, and I was picking bugs off my tomatoes at the back of my house on Shelter Island. The telephone rang and I ran inside to answer it. The managing editor of Time, Jason McManus, was on the line.”
2. “Jason, who was normally very laid back, sounded uncharacteristically excited. Had I seen the morning’s New York Times? No I had not. Well, go and have a look at the story on page 1, and call me back. It’s Wyeth.”
3. “With a sinking heart I drove to the island pharmacy and bought the paper. And there, on page 1, was a story by one of its arts reporters, Douglas McGill. It announced that a Pennsylvanian collector named Leonard Andrews had bought 240 — two hundred and forty! — previously unknown works by Andrew Wyeth, for an undisclosed sum said by their new owner to be in the “multi-millions of dollars.”
NB: “His wife, Betsy, the Times reported, had not known of their existence until 1985, when Wyeth, who feared he might be dying of influenza, told her about them. The announcement was made jointly by their new owner, Mr. Andrews, and the young editor of Art and Antiques, Jeff Shaire. Wyeth, apparently, had hinted to Shaire in the course of an interview a year before that he had a cache of secret drawingts and painting — “But I don’t want them to be seen. There’s an emotion in them that I feel very strongly about. Maybe some day they will be seen, but not until I am dead.”
For the rest of the Hughes article (highly recommended), click on the fourth link. And, for an extra treat, check out the 2020 obituary of Betsy Wyeth, the artist’s amazing, but unheralded, wife.
The Helga Pictures — Wikipedia
The Great Hype: When Helga Fooled Us All
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/arts/betsy-wyeth-dead.html
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