"'Helga': Cavalcade of Wyeth's Technical Skill," New York City Tribune, July 4, 1989, p. 16.

"The Helga Pictures": A Cavalcade of Wyeth's Technical Virtuosity

by Jason Edward Kaufman

On March 15, 1986, the collector Leonard E. B. Andrews visited the Andrew Wyeth estate in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Having already acquired six paintings by the renowned American realist, Andrews had been invited to take a look at Wyeth’s latest body of work, a so-called "private collection."

When he arrived, Wyeth pointed him towards the gristmill, an eighteenth-century fieldstone building that had been converted into the artist's storage area. Alone, inside, Andrews discovered

an array of paintings and sketches whose only human subject was a handsome, orange-haired woman whose name, he later would learn, was Helga.

"The room was very quiet and well-lighted," recalls Andrews, "and, as I walked slowly around, I almost couldn't believe what a rare artistic genius I was seeing and that I actually had the opportunity of owning the collection!" On the spot, Andrews resolved to buy not just one or two, but everything -- all 240 paintings and preparatory studies!

When I asked Mr. Andrews what possessed him to snatch up so many Wyeths in one fell swoop, he explained, "I bought them to keep them together and to show the American people. Three dealers were looking at the series when I bought it. They would have scattered it around the world; the public never would have seen it."

Andrews continued, "My immediate impression at the time continues to be my firm belief today: 'The Helga Collection' is a national treasure."

Soon after the purchase, seeking to have "The Helga Collection" reproduced in book form, Andrews approached Paul Gottlieb, president of Harry N. Abrams Publishers. Gottlieb suggested the notion of a museum exhibition, for which Abrams would produce the accompanying catalogue.

He put Andrews in touch with J. Carter Brown, Director, and John Wilmerding, then Deputy Director, of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. where "Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures" was swiftly organized. Heralded by a barrage of media reports -- most of which dwelt on Wyeth and Helga's supposed intimacy -- Andrews' original intentions were accomplished when the exhibition opened in May 1987 in Washington.

The ensuing six-city American tour has brought "The Helga Pictures" to literally millions of museumgoers in Boston, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Detroit. Before travelling to Japan this Autumn, the exhibition is currently concluding its U.S. itinerary at The Brooklyn Museum.

The third generation in a family of artist/illustrators, Andrew Wyeth was trained by his father, N. C. Wyeth. The younger artist's clear, illustrational style -- about as far from the post-modern Soho scene as one can get -- harks back to a time when painting filled the boots worn today by photography. In the manner of Bellini, Lotto, Durer, and Holbein, his extreme naturalism and meticulous technique produce startlingly accurate, "photographic" evocations of his sitters. In "The Helga Pictures," the fruit of his artistic maturity, it is this hyperrealism and virtuosity that Wyeth parades for our delectation.

The eponymous "Helga" Testorf is a German immigrant whose family works for Karl Kuerner, the neighbor whose farm and face Wyeth made the subjects of a great many of his works during the 1960s and 1970s. When Wyeth first sketched Helga in 1971, she was 38 years old.

One of several models whom Wyeth painted during the period, she is by far represented in the greatest depth. Betsy Wyeth, the artist's wife, had not known the extent of her husband's use of Helga until early 1986, when most of the series was complete. According to Andrews, Wyeth kept the pictures hushed because "he wouldn't have been able to finish the project with everyone looking at it."

The 118 images in the show, comprising roughly half of the series, span the years 1971 to 1985, and range from pencil drawings and watercolor sketches, to more finished drybrush and tempera paintings.

Many of the sheets are preparatory for the dozen or so highly finished paintings, and they are grouped accordingly in the exhibition. In these studies, Wyeth often focusses on a particular element or motif -- the sheen of Helga's reddish-blonde hair, the light describing a curve of her flesh -- leaving the remainder of the image less finished. These are Wyeth's arena for technical, chromatic, and compositional experimentation.

The model has been put through her proverbial paces. Helga appears inside the studio, in the surrounding landscape, and against a nondescript background, in shadow and in sunlight, during every season and time of day. She is depicted seated, standing, recumbent, and on her knees; clothed and nude; awake and asleep. She is viewed from every angle, and every part of her body is observed.

Nonetheless, this scrutiny does not cover a particularly broad range of emotions on the part of the sitter. Helga always appears withdrawn, meditative, somber, never smiling or frowning, neither optimistic nor displeased.

There is no narrative content. Helga is invariably stationary, and either self-absorbed or looking out of frame. The cummulative result is less a psychological portrait of a person than a study of the effects of light on a woman's body.

In his catalogue essay, John Wilmerding remarks, "In many of these images you find him [Wyeth] going beyond the study of nature to a study of Helga as an excuse to tell us about meditation, privacy and intimacy." But this is to read a good deal into the work.

An equation between Helga and Wyeth's characteristic dreary landscapes could also be suggested. The painter has said, "If it's an outdoor person, I feel that his countenance reflects the skies he walks under... and I try to get that quality into the portrait." But, a person is more than a mere reflection of his or her surroundings.

The real subject of these pictures is neither Helga as an allegory of private thought, nor even Helga as an embodiment of her Pennsylvania milieu. The subject of "The Helga Pictures" is Wyeth's virtuoso technique.

Andrews declares, "Wyeth has the finest touch of the brush of any living artist today," and he may well be right. Wyeth's compositions are unfailingly well balanced, his draughtsmanship utterly superb, his modelling accurate and convincing, and the colors veritably true to life.

In the pencil sketches, he renders proportions flawlessly, and with unerring consistency from one image to the next. In the watercolors, his impressive control of different tones of wash imparts the illusion of tangible form.

The painter's mastery of drybrush watercolor is most extraordinary: he leaches the water from his pigment-loaded brush and makes tiny strokes with the opaque color left on the bristles. Dragged across the paper's textured surface, these interwoven touches evoke the appearance of skin, and his drybrush method is no less persuasive when brought to the depiction of hair, linen, knitted yarn, sheepskin, and other substances. Indeed, many of Wyeth's effects surpass what might be achieved with a camera.

Yet, despite the allure of Wyeth's fantastic technical control, these pictures are vacant and a little cold. Helga is presented almost as a still life object. The painter's loving attention to visual truth has dispensed with living truth. The superficial eroticism (a quality endemic to frontal nudes), and the almost intrusive perspicacity of some pictures only temporarily cloak the fact that Helga is stripped of the complexity and depth of her personality.

While Wyeth's ability to capture Helga's voluptuous physique is pleasant and often astonishing, it is the awareness of her anonymity and distance that stays with us after our protracted encounter with this woman. Perhaps this sensation is a calculated undertone of Wyeth's artistry -- an expression of widespread alienation in (rural) America. Perhaps, on the other hand, it is the result of art that is only skin deep.

"Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures" continues at The Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, through September 18. The showing in Brooklyn has been made possible by New York Newsday. For further information call (718) 638-5000.

Jason Edward Kaufman ©