Word: helga
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Despite the professions of ignorance by most of Helga's neighbors, reporters eventually found her house across the road from the Kuerners', learned that her name is Helga Testorf, that she is now 54 and that she is married with four children and two grandchildren. (A daughter, Carmen, figures in a few works in the Helga series.) Her teenage son has been guarding the property and turning away reporters, and the tension weighing on him was visible. He was near tears as he said he wanted to protect his mother from being hurt. Told she was the subject...
...means his love of creating and being an artist. It means his self-esteem and his need to break new ground. It means the love of theater and drama, which has always been a part of his life. It does not mean that he was having an affair with Helga. Oh, yes, Betsy knew that using ; the word love would make the wags wag. They both have a marvelous way of teasing. But if he were having an affair, she would be the last one to go public about it. She would be protective of herself. And he would...
Back on Southern Island, Wyeth has turned away most requests for interviews, but did meet with TIME's Booth last Thursday. He declines to discuss Helga or her paintings, but he wants to clarify Betsy's use of the word love in relation to them. "People are going to think, particularly with this group of paintings, that it's a sexual love. It's not. We think of love only as two human beings in love. But it isn't in love. It's love. It's love toward an object. It can be a love toward those shells...
...artist is part camera, of course: he is the seer, adjusting technical and emotional focus to find a unique approach to the thing seen. Equally, he is reluctant to open the aperture on objects of his inspiration. In two hours, Wyeth has not mentioned Helga's name, referring to her only once as the "young lady." About the Helga series he will say only, "I feel -- not * all -- but there are a number of paintings in there that are as penetrating as anything I've ever done." Asked if he thinks it comprises his best work, Wyeth stares out toward...
That quiet revelation -- quoted in the September 1985 issue of Art & Antiques magazine -- triggered a chain of events that led to last week's shellburst of interest in the artist's secret Helga collection. As the art community focused its attention on Wyeth and his mystery model, the spotlight was shared by the magazine that first got on to the story. TV crews and reporters swarmed over its modest, fifth-floor headquarters on Manhattan's lower Fifth Avenue. The rush of phone calls was so overwhelming at one point that the lights on the switchboard simply conked...