This book and the accompanying retrospective exhibition in Kansas City give us the rarc opportunity to consider the six-decade career of a signal American artist in light of as many years of thorny critical debate. As Thomas Hoving reminds us in his thoughtful introductory essay, Andrew Wyeth and his work are extremely complex. Neither submits comfortably to the categorizations into which much critical writing has tried to cast them. There has been the tendency to superimpose on the art preconceived critical positions limited by parochial boundaries rather than to try to understand the means Wyeth exploits to reveal our times and our psyche with such compelling force. At once alluring and unsettling, the work strikes the very heart of our emotional being, reminding us that art is ultimately about truth and the human condition.

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

The Plates and Commentary

Personal Chronology

Chronology of Exhibitions

Selected Bibliography

Index