BBC Michael Palin in Wyeth´s World

this is Maine on America's northeast coast it's the perfect holiday destination for wealthy New Englanders seem to escape the heat and humidity at the summer months petit between July and September each year the sparsely populated coastal towns swell to capacity with handsome well-heeled vacationers but there's another side to Maine one where people graft hard for a living on land and see a rural rugged existence which fed the penetrating gaze of artist Andrew Wyeth and fueled his long and extraordinary career Wyeth not only immortalized the American landscape he created interior world's hidden histories intrigue and magic his unflinching vision didn't always pleased the art world but had captured the hearts and minds of the American people my exploration of why Earth's long life and prolific work begins here at this remote farmstead it was this rural side of Maine that in 1948 inspired Andrew Wyeth to paint his masterpiece a work that became an icon of American art and a painting which was puzzled in a tree greed from the first time I saw it why Earth's most famous painting was named after subject woman he once described as a wounded ghoul the painting was called Christina's world the backdrop to Wyeth painting of Christina's world is this 18th century farmhouse now preserved as a State Museum the farm once owned by the Olson family has become a destination for modern pilgrims who want to experience the almost spiritual significance of this location Janice Kasper once a tour guide here shows me around so here's the house and it's been here for quite a while and you could see it's uh what the weathered yeah yeah when Andrew Wyeth first started to paint here during his family summer holidays in the 1940s the farmers owned and run by Alvaro Olson and his unmarried sister Cristina they lived without electricity into the 1950s they collected rainwater off the roof was their water supply and they lived off the land yeah so I want to show you something in this hallway and if we scoot down yeah this is Christina's refrigerator when I slide it open yeah and you can feel how cold it is and you can see the real yeah yeah yes and it's also a way to get down to check the sister simple technology yes yeah Alvaro and Cristina's hand-to-mouth existence on the farm was not the only challenge they faced when Christina was a little girl her mother noticed that she felt a lot and then as she got older it got progressively worse that her legs got weaker and then by the time I think that she was in her 40s she pretty much lost the use of her legs and she was one of these tough proud stubborn women who refused to use cane or crutches or a wheelchair she was gonna get around on her own ability and in this house I understand she would hit yourself around in a chair or she would crawl and outside she crawled Kristina's disability meant that the upstairs floors of the house were out of her reach they were closed up and used for storage until Andrew Wyeth began to use the rooms as makeshift studios there's one painting he made from up here which for me really captures the essence of the place when Wyeth ties up this window it hadn't been opened for years such was his attention to detail that he waited for two months for the wind to change in the right direction before completing the painting it was also from up here that he first saw Christina dragging herself through the grass like as he put it a crab on a New England Shore this painting really is much less simple than you think at first sight I mean I remember when I first saw it I thought that the figure in the foreground was a young girl and we know that Christina here was in the mid 50's and she was a paraplegic and that's the way she moved through the grass you know when you understand it's not a purely realistic picture he's trying to express something through this picture to try and work out what it is is expressing and what I can see here is Christina looking up at the farm which he can never get away from and there's something there sort of almost she's almost trapped it's almost like she won't get away despite this vast open space despite all the potential of it there's something quite dark going on there so is she trying to get away or to try and get mad I don't know it's just it's a puzzle raises so many questions although christina was an important muse for Wyatt he also painted scenes in and around the Olson farm for more than 30 summers producing over 300 distinctive works when Christina Olson died in 1968 it closed an important chapter in Weyers career but by far the largest portion of his work was created in a very different landscape 500 miles south of him you Chad's for Pennsylvania wife's permanent home from his birth in 1917 to his death in 2009 is a small town with a big place in American history these Meadows by the Brandywine River once battlefields almost 223 years ago to the day Bridgette American soldiers fought each other here in the war of independence or the great Revolutionary War of the Sandy wind reenactors prefer to call it have you ever had the pleasure a fire in one of these no no no oh my friend right pressure I think you know I get some sparkle in your eye which makes me think that there's an element uh well some danger there but do you have per class Asst just yeah we're safety safe nothing might be some stuff flying oh yes you get powdered it flashes popping when the powder is ignited should meant to go that way well you know it will it will okay will this kick fun mom it wouldn't be that much of a kick because there isn't a bullet in it okay how important was the battle that was fought here in the Brandywine River oh the battle was I mean very important you have this is one the largest land battle of the revolution and you have the British over on this side over here and the Americans on this side now the landscape is not going to be very reflective of what it was in the eighteenth century you had a lot more concealment yeah a lot more cover and in the morning hours it was just basic scattered musket shot going across the river back and forth between the two armies but in the afternoon that's when the British started crossing and the fierce fighting village took place locals say the river behind me ran red with the blood of dying and injured bodies of British and American officers but despite this setback at the Brandywine River the Americans went on to win their war against the British oppressors and train this vast country as their own a country that wire's father raised his son to always feel proud to belong to Andrew Wyeth was born into a wealthy artistic family of Swiss German origin known as Andy he was a youngest of five children doted on by his three older sisters particularly Anne his constant childhood companion what was it like you know for your mother and Andrew who two years apart growing up in this house what was their relationship how did they well there were wonderful friends of course they slept in the same bed they played together and and as children they did everything together in the beginning I mean at some point he I mean they drew there were always paper but they played up in these woods they dressed up they played Robin Hood they played Knight they did all the things that grandpa was painting the young Andrews love of storybook war and heroism was fed not only by the battle-scarred history around him but also by his great influence and teacher his larger-than-life father Newell convers wife known as NC or par to his family he was a celebrated artist sought-after for his dynamic picture book illustrations which brought history to life his work for Scribner classics had generations of readers spellbound NC was so successful as commercial artists he was able to build a grand family home construct a studio behind it and pay for the surrounding 18 acres of land with a commission for one single work Treasure Island you know he was so real to all of us it was always what par said what pod did what he thought what I mean he created this world for us all he dressed up his old Chris what time to close and he actually got up on the roof and he stamped around and he rang bells down that chimney and woke them up and they came down to see him just out of the corner of their eye leaving there's something about this family that that I think is remarkable is the quality of joy and life of joy and everything and grandpa had that and my mother had that and she kept on with that and Andy had that it's just open to the box it's the ribbon it's just joy at life of just God isn't it breathe and his childhood was exciting Nick Dilek but also dog by ill-health recurring chest infections and a problem with his hip which affected him throughout his life but neither of them seemed to temper his inquisitive nature and boisterous creative energy and so he was kind of an enfant Arriba in a way you know I mean he was he was allowed you know he was precocious and he was not denied anything nc decided his youngest son was too fragile for public school so Andy was tutored at home he was free to roam around his father's studio where epic scenes of American heroism were being conjured up with the help of period costumes and historical regalia NC Wyeth was an enormous ly successful commercial artist and yet all this didn't really matter to him he was determined to shape his gifted young son into the kind of fine art painter that he himself had never really become he wanted his son to be free both artistically and personally Andrew found heroism not in a costumed and constructed world like his father's but in the reality of everyday life his first show at the Macbeth gallery in New York in 1937 was a sellout so impressed was his father that he proclaimed that his son Andrew was on the right track to reach the pinnacle of American art so no pressure there this is an early self-portrait of Andrew painted Josiah had big success in New York with an exhibition he was 21 years old and I think it's quite interesting cuz he sort of projecting himself as a serious successful artist but at the same time the in the eyes kind of a wariness of yo don't read me too easily this something of a mystery there and this was one of the first paintings that he painted in egg tempera he'd rejected the oil paints that his father NC Wyeth had brought him up to use and I can only think that that must have been deliberate that try and escape from a shadow of his celebrated father he chose different subjects but also different materials to paint those subjects the Brandywine River museum houses the largest collection of both NC and Andrew Wyeth's work joyce stone owner team a task with conserving the painting of both father and son their self-portrait that he did was that first time he used egg tempera oh yes he hits the ground running with the self portrait and then the portrait of Walt Anderson and it's there done so similarly and they were sort of brothers under the skin at that time Andrew was fascinated with outsiders and especially trickster pranksters he had to feel a special kinship and Walt Anderson who is pictured in young Swede is a wonderful example of this Walt is a trickster he is a lobster poacher apparently he and Andy would steal boats together and so they were loved anyone who was a pirate and so Walt was an original pirate and you you see how he paints Walt as this incredibly handsome young man that they did things together and had fun and he loved it that he was a pirate and he was always breaking the rules Andrew Wyeth also bucked the trend when it came to his painting technique he chose to work in egg tempera a challenging medium barely used since the 16th century so it started with someone picking up an egg and you're going to do what are you gonna do I think you're going to do it I don't like it scrambled oil yeah well what we're gonna do is we're gonna separate the egg yolk from the white go ahead and break the egg okay there we go let the white fall into the jar yep there we are and there's the yolk and now I pass it from hand to hand yeah and you can wipe your hands and unless you've never done this before never ever Oh am I good at this ashy oh no oh dear well I realize well that's why we have my oven once and I was getting overconfident wife's decision to use egg tempera was bold not only did he need to mix paint from egg yolk and pigments every time he started but it's quick-drying properties made he have to work fast and mix that up we now have pain okay why do they do that why did its cover an egg and pigment went together particularly well it's actually a very good binder to hold pigments to a surface so in painting we know that between the middle ages up until around 1500 it was the dominant paint medium in Europe right so and we think about it especially with early Italian paintings of the early masters Giotto through my subjective discovered in the Renaissance oh all it actually predates the Renaissance so if we think of late medieval paintings the earlier icons are all painted in egg tempera he loved taking tempera where it shouldn't go and when people told him you couldn't paint tempera at night that it wasn't a night medium he painted Walt Anderson again poaching lobsters and it's called night hauling and he pushed tempera to look like night if you also look up close at the tempers they look at dried and weed up goes it looks like a micro Jackson Pollock it looks like a little explosion because he is doing things you're not supposed to do with tongue so these are the Andrew Wyeth galleries and they're changed periodically with wonderful things young sweet and this fabulous thing of his dog it looks like a railroad and then oh here are all the different ones he painted in chat soon joist is this perception that when you look at wife's work you're looking at the work of a realist will be it may be a romantic realist and then see a painting like this and that's almost abstract in the shapes nor that how did he see what he was doing and how did others see money today oh well absolutely he was very aware of powerful shapes and forms if you look at the roof and the powerful beams coming out at you it's a Varon and the shadows it's it's very powerful and very spooky really juts out against the grey sky but next to it is this sketch did he do preliminary sketches he often did preliminary sketches while he was working on conceptualising what the sort of magic realism the spooky this chilly sense of death and so this is a wonderful comparison of the whoosh with the precise and showing them right together so this is this is a watercolor yes it's a it's ink and watercolor and just see it slightly more the the gray is a slightly lighter and the shadings on the bird slightly lighter here's a much bolder black [ __ ] exactly exactly here we see another version of the two worlds of Andrew Wyeth the free splash and dash of the watercolor and then the exactitude but they do work together as you can see him working out in his mind how to do this was part of the reason that she just making tempura to distinguish himself from his father and his father's preference for oils absolutely Andrew had to rebel from NC and so you can really look at how the media bounced around as they try to get out of each other's way and because there's tremendous love and tremendous competition in that family it was not just Andrew Wyeth's unique painting style which helped him break away from his father's often overbearing influence it was also the love of a determined young woman we met in the summer of 1939 Betsy James was brought up in New England the daughter of a Welsh picture editor and a well-bred Christian mother with her striking looks she was a force to be reckoned with despite MCS objections Andrew not one to pussyfoot around proposed to Betsy within weeks of meeting her she accepted Betsy was 18 and Andrew was 21 the marriage produced two boys Nikki and Jamie and lasted sixty-nine years until wife's death oh I was very fortunate to run into her I didn't know I had that many brains for young we're different it's all not always peaceful but nothing good is peaceful remember that if you got too much peace god help you you have to have kicking the tail once in a while but we have a great time we don't have a barren moment I can tell you that wanting to keep his young son close nc gifted the newlyweds of property near to the Wyeth family home the old schoolhouse became not only a home for his young family tour so Andrews first studio in his own away from his father bets his influence over him increased as their son Jamie remembers it was a painting a tempura which was a medium that he was just really starting with and it was just a figure walking away in the field and he was very excited about and asked his father to come sit and his father said Andy you know it's remarkable but you need to put a gun in his hand you have to have dogs but completely missing his son was doing that and Betsy who was probably 18 said don't listen to that old fart you do exactly what you're going yeah pretty amazing so I mean with no knowledge of painting she got it she obviously adored his work and thought this is incredible was being produced here this is a world that's extraordinary my father was very close to his father and his father was very close to him I'm he just wanted to control him young Betsy James was escape away from that but in a way he married his father I mean she became yes totally the one then controlling but but gave him freedom to do exactly what he want but kept track of what was being painted what was and you know titles he titled everything so every sir been so Christina's world and solitary title really he just painted and then showing to her Betsy took every opportunity to promote her husband's work before long the marriage evolved into a business partnership the boundaries between family and work began to blur well I mean it wasn't that my father was going to work putting a tie on everyone out of his just Steve would wander in from the breakfast table and and we would wander in as children lying on the floor here doing drawing but it was just this was our - when you see some of these drawings here do they bring back memories you know what they're all nice when he was working he would have drawings packed all over the wall all over the floor as you see their footprints dog prints stepping on them I mean he would was to be completely immersed in what he was doing totally forgetting time and in fact he was a wild painter I mean water was thrown paint was all over the floor he liked accident really man something and then it's all guest filtered it is finally final parts to B to C I'm trusting yeah he's a very peculiar painter Andrew Wyeth I mean it's this funny airless crystalline world particularly in the tempers and it was a very strange peculiar world which I think makes us work extraordinary although Wyeth had an official studio indoors his unofficial outdoor studio was the whole of chad's forward Andrew Wyeth painted uninterrupted for almost 7 full decades one of the longest careers of any artist what he painted here at Chad's Ford was compiled just a few square miles this small piece of territory and the people occupied it reveal to earth a world so deep and detailed then no matter how often he painted it he always discovered something new but was one location within Chadds Ford which would become more important to him than any other at the Kerner farm Wyeth would produce hundreds of sketches and paintings over a period of 70 years as with Christina and the Olson farm the inspiration the wife drew from this one location was boundless he started painting it when he was 15 and stopped the year before he died he was fascinated not just by the farm and the landscape around it but also by the Kerner family lived here enigmatic Outsiders German immigrants he was fascinated by their connection with a Jew tonic old-world of his ancestors Wyeth was attracted to the rhythms of life here as well as to its owners farmer Carl Koerner his wife Anna and their children their son Carl jr. remembers see Wyeth painting in and around the farm everybody liked a new God he would come early mornings we never knew he'd be up in the woods painting or we'd be cutting long to field we'd see any say hello I said Andy I said stay away from the havea we said we come with our big cutter we cut your toes off Carl Jr's father intrigued wife not just because of his German ancestry but also his experience in battle as a machine gunner in the First World War my father he talked a lot about the First World War it gave Andy a lot of ideas and being in the trenches you know that fierce fighting is a lot of my father lost a lot of his close friends and he said when you in trenches you got to keep your head down to me it made him very stern it's like working for a German officer you take the good with the bad Carl's mother Anna was a continual source of fascination for Wyatt portrayed her as a lost soul an almost spectral figure my mother was very quiet congenial I think she was homesick she wanted take us children and all back to Germany my father said no he can't do that now he says we're here we have to make the best time I understand that there was a wife family tragedy here and you were working on the farm close to where it happened we're upper husky cold we heard this crash I thought an airplane come down or something big noise big noise and I said all the fellas wait here I'll walk down see what happened Andrew Wiles father nc was driving his car with his four-year-old grandson in the back when tragedy struck on a railroad at the foot of Kerner's farm NC Wyeth and his young grandson were killed outright when the car in which they were traveling was hit by a train on this railway line in October 1945 but no one knows cause of the accident was a mechanical failure in the car was it a temporary heart attack was it that some people say that and he was sketching at the time the only thing we really know is that we shall never know we're coming to the location with all this very was killed and that brought it to a head to me because it all this life that I'd had by myself over here I didn't read telling on about it it all became the fact that he was killed here it all became very pointed to me his meaning wasn't just because it was a handsome-looking hill or a lovely old barn that that wasn't it at all it was just again came sort of a memory of everything to me that meant something to me but I'll need this whole place where it went into me not just a farm but the certain truth give me a reason to paint up to that point I was painting but I think I've paid in pictures now that became a real reason and urge to do something emotional reason I think it made nc's accident was not the only tragedy Wyeth would associate with Kerner's farm when car Koerner was diagnosed with cancer in the early 1970s Wyeth charted his slow decline from warrior to wasted body a shadow of his own father's death always present something else been happening at Kerner's farm during the years wife was charting cars fading health it all started when Andrew met the woman brought in to care for the sick farmer on hot summer afternoons she took to resting in the upstairs attic which Wyeth had begun to use as one of his temporary studios she was Prussian like the colonel as a German immigrant she was married with children in her mid-30s her name was Helga tests off Andrew started to paint her sleeping waking thinking dressed and undressed but for 15 years he hid away every painting he produced not just from the outside world but also from his wife and business partner Betsy Helga became the catalyst one of the greatest scandals in American art history and one of its best kept secrets he continued to paint his usual subjects and by producing a steady flow of work Wyeth was able to paint Helga without arousing suspicion but the concealment couldn't last and when the held the painters were first revealed how did it happen what was told to the public they were revealed as the secret body of work kept private even from his own family and especially his wife and therefore he must be hiding something beyond just the fact that he painted this these nudes that was sort of the subtext of almost everything that was written at the time that he had betrayed his wife Betsy in some way Betsy Wyeth had been the driving force behind an extremely successful business producing reproductions of a husband's work for sale to the general public but it was not popular with everyone most of the critics took potshots based on reproduction as they had seen or works that were in public collections which weren't that many I mean aside from Christina's world of the Museum of Modern Art there weren't that many hanging in museums around the country for a variety of reasons yeah and I think for New York critics in particular they were just dumbfounded by an artist who would paint farms and and fishermen I think that aspect of his work is part and parcel of what critics see as the sort of nostalgia of looking back at earlier periods of time frankly Edward Hopper did the same thing he wasn't a real fan of cities he was kind of lamenting the loss of farms and rural life and there is that heritage that is very deep-seated in sort of the American psyche I think in some ways however controversial wires output was amongst the critics it didn't stop the 250 works that make up the Helga cycle being sold almost immediately they went to a single collector for what was reportedly around six million dollars the National scandal had only helped push up the price you know Andy had his own reasons for what he did and I think part of it was in the nature of a surprise for for the world but also for his wife he wanted to prove in his own way that he was capable of this rather in those days and in his mind a body of work that was going to raise some eyebrows he wanted to go deeper he wanted to build on that early success but he was trying to get at certain aspects of the human condition that were in ours you know important to him you know change life death sex all those things are kind of the themes that he explored throughout his work in various ways in almost three decades since the scandal broke Helga test-drove has rarely spoken about her experiences today she's agreed to meet me talk about her years with wild hello Helga hello there sir Michael how are you my crying very nice to meet you thank you so much talking to us it's great to meet you can I ask you just take you slightly back to the circumstances which led to him revealing the 15 years worth of paintings he did of you how did that come about did he tell you that he I don't know how to tell you that that is so obvious it was expected of him to put our paintings like pancakes and no real artist wants to be controlled of producing painting that look like postcards one after another so are you saying that he was going to appear when he was producing things that were sort of emotional they didn't okay or just like that he needed to be painting for himself and he knew that the paintings they had done with you he didn't have to show them to anybody he could learn he could he needed to feed himself not always have some critic tell him oh this is good this is not good when he was the most peaceful man why would you argue with them they didn't know any better he was the best critic there was and together we critics believe me I learned a lot and he listened to me too it was so important what you did for him it was that something a relationship that worked straight away but yeah is it something that I always wanted to be a model or an artist or movie star it was a childish dream because my mother always said you gotta have a profession first so the fact that he wanted you to model for him that must have been for you a wonderful sort of relief anyway yes it was I supervised it wouldn't believe it but you know when I do something it's not just some that present it's all or nothing roughly how many hours a day would you be oh my god in beginning we did it our sometimes page out it was long you always said are you tired yet I didn't know keep on going my kids we both knew whatever it takes such a stillness in a lot of the paintings was that hard drive so it's not just a question of lying on a bed and going to sell us hard and you're sore because you have to hold a certain musician very sore when the paintings he made if you were revealed and the press got hold of it I mean wasn't supposed to was this something you were prepared for no it's not never he wasn't supposed to be sure until it's after his death he totally really he totally I think he was sort of caught in something to come out I don't know how it came up are you saying that he he didn't want the paintings to be seen until after his death mm-hmm look what you're saying yeah with his promise to me but Mother Nature had other plans when the story of the Helga paintings broke in 1985 the American press bombarded Helga's family home hounding her to speak out about a supposed affair with Andrew Wyeth all hell broke loose I think all the paparazzi's were after us couldn't find me I loved it hey wait huh how did you get your way how did you get away from us secret that's me absolutely there must have been people wagging tongue saying that you were his mistress and you know it was a sexual really didn't know any better they didn't know our language we were not talking that way we have better things to think about is it you just missed the sunrise or you just missed daleiden did you see the beautiful moon last night Nature has all the answers he couldn't follow us it wasn't a sexual relationship it has nothing to do with it whatever was personal what's that got to do with the painting if you are sitting and trying to get a certain tone for instance you know how many times you have to try and do you know that it's magic in the brush you think you wanted anybody to watch them paint I put it right on the line and that's about it there are many people who knocked on our door how can i cooperating with you can i watch your pain certainly not any more than I will have you watch me making love no the nude is the most holy thing that you can get next to it the divine spirit this whole you paints this old WAIS younger son Jamie now has his permanent home in Maine on southern island a short boat ride from tenant's harbor carrying on the family tradition Jamie Wyeth like his father Andrew and his grandfather NC is a respected painter his own right whilst his painting has its own distinct style his father's work ethic has certainly rubbed off on him antastic jamie is clearly a man who works hard in his art let's see him do something I'll thank you thank you the wrong way around sending the boat that's the studio but I paint in the bathroom my pen and the trees so I I like not having a real studio just what takes your fancy yes a particular Jack yeah absolutely island life became a sanctuary for the family after the fury of the Helga scandal what was the reaction from the family when the Helga paintings were revealed well then what was the effect on the family well I mean it's a remarkable body of work I think the first reaction was my god and he produced this huge amount of work and also produced all other things at the time and all kept this a secret and and was your mother immediate reaction well our first reaction must be was amazing that this body of work and then she then yeah it was obviously a she felt how could he have done this without my knowledge I mean she had been a real partner of he in his life and work and of course the complete you couldn't get more diametric opposite than Betsy Wyeth and the hell get that story a little picture well it was really was a perfect portrait of my father I mean he would go from his Houseman with my mother which and that house is devoid of flowers devoid of any artifice and when it's just the paintings in the wall very sit him and then he would travel to a studio which was Helga's domain which was complete chaos food stacked up magazines books tunnels through and it really the two sides of my father's personality yeah and I don't think he really even had a love affair with Helga wasn't any of that it was just he was obsessed with her fingernails her elbow or pubic hair whatever he was just obsessed with sort of getting her on paper and paint the relationship them to your mother and held her I imagine was slightly awkward Herrero yes but I think you know to me the hell does that mean is a combination of his interest in Carl Koerner Germans that part of Chad's forward where they lived the whole it did a lot of things rolled into into that sort of thing and then the big secret the fact that he was able to work in these things without people knowing about it so why he ended up living online why was that well because my mother his wife chose to live in an island she wanted to create this world and and he didn't want it so an island person he was not why did she like Island she loved the control she loved the fact of being surrounded by water and she could control who was seeing you know what was going on and so forth it did fit right into her modus operandi okay Cheers again my compute thank you thank you they've traveled it seems pretty clear to me that Andy was a free spirit who could never be tied down after the Helga scandal was over he continued to see his muse now no longer a secret helga was often by his side while he painted both during his summers in Maine and when the summer was over back in chats for although Andrew had painted his hometown for most of his life he continued to find new subjects even in his later years in the 1990s he transferred his attentions to local couple George and Helen said Paula he virtually took up residence in their home becoming almost part of the furniture he wanted to get us up close and personal as was humanly possible recording and painting every detail of their daily routine he knew where the key was he knew how to get in and he came when he wanted to so he didn't feel it was kind of like an intrusion you come no no aah now when we caught us in bed that was a little embarrassing well cochin well it's like he would come in maybe 6 o'clock and once he knew where the key was then he would sneak in love to sneak in on us I mean he loved to tiptoe in for stairs and he would go down the hall and the first few times he'd stand by the bed and for some reason I would wake up and I'd scream because he'd be standing over me and then we after a while we started catching on and we listened for the car and then we started playing jokes on him so he was expected us to be in the bed which we stayed there but sometimes we put the wings on ourselves mannequins inside on the pillow like they were sleeping in and we and we'd step into the next room and look through the cracks of the door and and watch him coming in on his you know tiptoeing ever so lightly you know then he'd go and he'd pick up the bedspread and they and from the backroom we'd be saying gotcha you know we'd say we did terrible things to him terrible things but he loved it it doesn't sound very restful your ballgames either not what are we gonna do yeah he'd met his match when he came here for all those years he painted I would have to call my boss and say I'll be a little late today and II had no concept of time of my job he would start painting and if I had to leave he would get very upset it was very possessive of isn't it really was it was a hideaway for him when he wanted to get away from anybody news people um visitors if company up any kind this this was a hideaway his wife well I think everybody wants to get away from the wife once a tall bottle everything everybody went to get away from the husband once in a while too and we made a point of having Christmas with the sibylla's in the last 20 years of his life he spent virtually every Christmas Damon I said Andy we're going to have you over for a Christmas party and he said well I'm going to tell you now Betty won't come so George wrote that see a letter and said in effect in the nicest of words that we will miss you and it was it you'll be very comfortable here in blah blah blah down the line hold letter and at the very end I told her to get her ass over here that's right I understand that our secretary says how can anybody talk to you like that yeah she's she KKK no yes that got her they've got I went to the Dornier she was hello welcome to Pallas come on in when people gave him Christmas presents it would be coats and boots and shoes and he'd have to run right over to show us what he got for cause I'd have to say wait a minute Andy I have to get a picture of this I have to get a picture and that's how we were preserved this or else he would never pose it but they might have liked you getting this portrait of a reclusive exhibitions you're late that's right others move out that you're right no but we have on sweaters yeah then mom drop again he does Christmas 2008 would be Andy's lost with the subpoenas he died just a few weeks later at the ripe old age of 91 Hellen zapala sent her condolences to his widow betsy me dear Betsy and family we are thinking of you during this very difficult time we send our love thoughts prayers George and I have lost a dear and loyal friend and Andy twenty years ago he entered our lives and never left so many memories so much joy and a real honor to know him we will miss him dearly especially at Christmas this past Christmas he stopped in during the morning and had his last cup of tea with us it was touching love Helen so maybe what's gone the morning after worth death Betsy turned to the family that had made her husband famous all those years earlier out of the blue Jon Olsson nephew of Andrews Muse Cristina received a call inquiring about the family graveyard the morning he died BET's he called me and she says I want you to know Andy's passed away and you're the first to noise were you surprised that he wanted to be buried alongside was Dean in the family plot yes I was but she said well said she made us famous so we feel that we ought to bury there so I I went ahead with it the grave digger came down to the house knocked on the door and he said where you put Andy and I I sure wouldn't mean worm I put in Andy and he said well I guess you're the one that's got to pick out his grave so I had to cut to the cemetery and find a spot where he's where to bury him was that a difficult thing to choose well I walked around I said what do you do with a famous man what and I mean I'm not a famous person by no means I'm I'm just a common everyday person around here and so I picked out the spot where he's buried okay so now it's ready bait it up Wow see stuff let me just like you Wow yeah yeah okay there we go okay god bless our godown and here we have Ana Christina's grave and her brothers - yeah brother Alvaro yeah and Christina's parents small distance or cemeteries me it is it's it's just a few families yeah and here we have Andrew widescreen yeah cuz I'm Jews this is the newest grave in the cemetery nice simple stuff yeah very simple just to name and date yeah no other information yeah that's the most recent most recent great there's almost nothing here which I like I think I'm more attracted as I get older by noting vacancy light on the side of a wall or the light on these snowdrifts and their shadows across them makes me go back more into my soul but you have to save it for the right moment it's like building up your urge for sex if you let it peter out all the time it's no good but if you build it up for the right moment it's terrific and I find that's true with painting I mean you could be going along I can be going along and think god this is Elvis is a little vacant and then I see a piece of barbed wire against the snow rusted barbed wire with maybe a piece of horses a Mane caught in it and that rusty bob wire and that horse is made here I can just go to you and get you going after a life dedicated to art it seems right that Andrew Wyeth's final resting place is almost the spot where he painted Christina in front of her family home it seemed a gesture typical of the man that even in death he wanted to be with the people whose ordinary lives and hard struggles he depicted for so long the more I've learned about Andrew Wyeth the more intriguing I find him brilliant technician and a man of mischief for playful prankster disciplined enough to paint on almost every single day of his working life an artist who created a unique world wire swirl by capturing time and time again the universal in his own backyard coming up on bbc2 a tray of fries Christmas delight with a seasonal special Qi next then for 2013 the best images came from the camera in your pocket smart phones capture moments in time at 10:30 you

Channel: Karin Ek

Views: 860,657

Rating: 4.8707767 out of 5

Keywords: andrew wyeth, Michael Palin (TV Writer)

Id: jNuGbKIoUds

Length: 58min 51sec (3531 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/ChildOfComplexity]

Funny how it doesn't really touch on the magical realist aspects of his work. I guess it's hard to articulate, let alone in a documentary aimed at a broad audience.

I wonder what kind of work he would have produced if he couldn't have insulated himself in the manner he did.