Customer Reviews

Andrew Wyeth: Autobiography

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Of all the Wyeth artists, Andrew is the most prolific and most lauded. If you wonder why, read this book. The idea is simple: A picture and a reminisience. Thomas Hoving conducted a series of interviews with Andrew and placed the artist's insight into his own work next to the work itself. The format is as austere and magnificent as the paintings themselves. The plate qualities are excellent and all of the pieces are shown in their entirety. This is not an autobiography of Andrew's life but rather a penetrating look into sixty years of peerless artistry. The book contains no detail plates nor does it attempt to explain Andrew's often cryptic commentary, but it takes you into the mind and soul of the artist. Delight in this. It is a treasure.

This is a book that will give any Wyeth fan pleasure. When I finally got a copy, it was wish fullfillment. To see 138 of the artist's works with his own comments is a great pleasure. And some of the comments are quite provocative! The prints are top quality and follow the artist's career chronologically. The book also includes a personal chronology of Andrew Wyeth's life, as well as exibitions and a bibliography for those who want to know more. Definitely a keeper!

My teacher introduced me to Andrew Wyeth's paintings and drawings about a year or two ago. I've been in love with his work ever since. It's just how beautiful his linework is and how he brings life to the paintings. That is so incredibly rare. There are plenty of portrait artists out there, but I can't think of one that impresses me as much as he does. I think this is because of how well he knew his subjects.

He said drawing with pencil helped him get to the core of a thing. If you've ever drawn or painted people and animals from life, as he did, it increases the appreciation for his work one hundred fold. I also think that this is why his paintings and sketches are so full of life - you just don't get that from a photo, there is NO comparison. His landscapes blow me away every time, and I'm not really a fan of landscape paintings. Something about the solitude of it all just takes me in.

My favourite is Night Sleeper, which is on the cover. His palette is just beautiful, i don't really think it's muted or drab - the closer you look, the more colours you see. How he played colours in juxtaposition, so that they glow, is another part that gives his work such intensity and life.

The comments beside all the work are, as people have mentioned, very good. The entire book is one of those slow joy books. It's just nice to sit with it and turn the pages slowly and take in every thing.

This isn't a linear autobiography, in the usual sense. Instead, it presents selections from Wyeth's entire life as a painter, from his mid-teens to his late seventies, when this book was published. Wyeth's own notes on each piece make it an autobiography.

This says less about the artist than about his artwork, which speaks for itself. His subdued palette captures the people and places of his life. Places include farms, barn or farmhouse interiors, Maine shorelines, and other open spaces that are increasingly hard to find. Wyeth's people include his wife Betsy, his sister, and neighbors. Grittier than Norman Rickwell but no less affetionate, he presents them at work, at hard-earned rest, or simply at a quiet moment. A few nudes of teenaged Siri, including the remarkable "The Virgin," capture the gawky grace of emerging womanhood. Two images really stood out for me, though, images I would never have associated with Wyeth. "Spring" and "Christmas morning" carry a surreal sense, somehow even closer the the supernatural for their entirely realistic rendering. "Spring," especially, offers an amiguous sense of hope using the starkest and bleakest of visual language.

As Wyeth narrates each painting, a sentence to a paragraph for each, parts of his life emerge: friendships, successes, and losses. Without being mysterious, the text comes across as spotty and selective, omitting far more than it presents. If you want a standard kind of biography, you'll have to look elsewhere. Instead, this book is closer to the occasional cup of coffee with the artist, shared over weeks or months, in which different moments of his life arise almost at random. His words add an intimacy to the art that's hard to express, but that is worth experiencing - as is the art itself.

-- wiredweird

I didn't know a lot about Andrew Wyeths work before reading this book. I had seen the paintings and I liked them a lot, but I didn't know that much about them.

The book is labeled as an autobiography, but its form is not what many might expect. This is not a book consisting of prose with the occasional picture, it is a book that mainly shows Wyeths paintings with a paragraph or two about the paintings below. Written by Wyeth. For some this may not be what they are looking for, but I liked this very much.

It is a very good introduction to Wyeth's paintings and the subject matter he painted. The people, the places and their history. There isn't a lot of information about Wyeth himself in the book. At least not in the sense one would expect from a traditional biopgraphy. But after reading it I feel I know a lot more about both Wyeth and his paintings than a typical art-history or biographical text would give me.

I'd be happy to recommend this book.

i bought this book together with 'memory and magic'. As an artist I found this book much more informative and acessible than the other. It contains Wyeth's own personal comments about his work, which are wonderful and incisive, together with lots of preparatory sketches and other bits of information that really add to your enjoyment and understanding of the work.
It has a full colour plate on every page, and so contains a lot of work with this wonderful feeling of personal insight). The other book is great too, but is more of a 'standard' art book (eg several essays, plus all the favourite images you'd expect to find) if had had to pick one I would pick this one - just as good (if not better) and half the cost! This is a really great inclusion to any art book library. The only thing that memory and magic has that this one doesent is close up details from some of the tempera and drybrush paintings which are great to be able to really see the detail of his technique.

This book is for the true Andrew Wyeth fan. The pictures are amazing and the articles informative. It made a wonderful gift for an elderly gentleman who loved this artist. The pictures will come alive for you and the depth of his passion for painting will pull you right into them. A truly remarkable artist who will be greatly missed after his passing in 2009.

As a longtime Andrew Wyeth admirer this book is a pure delight. It ties beautifully back to the early books of Wanda Corn and others who have written on Andrew. But what is wonderful is that, with the recent passing of Andrew we now have a complete overview of a remarkable man and his inner thoughts underscoring and illuminating a choice selection of some of his most progressive works of art in this text. Surely this is the book that will become the classic in the Wyeth lore and well it should be. William Havlicek PhD.

This book which is truly autobiographical is a must have for Wyeth lovers. I am a photographer and find his compositions very interesting and learnt a lot about his approach to painting. A beautiful book.

Oh this is a fabulous book. My first copy was bought on a whim. Someone 'borrowed' it and it was missing from my stash of art inspiration books. I found myself constantly wishing I had this book (unlike others in my collection that I sometimes rediscover and then forget about again)! So, I reordered this. I am so happy to have it back! (Good speedy service from Amazon too). What a treat to get into the mind of such a talented artist. It's like having a chat w/a genius each time you open it. He describes what inspired him and any thoughts about the painting. The picture quality is superb. This is an amazing book to see the breadth and scope of a master's body of work.