CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/2/2014

Andrew Wyeth and the 'Pursuit of Strangeness' in the New York Review of Books

In the June 19 issue of the New York Review of Books, Christopher Benfey reviews three books surrounding Looking Out, Looking In, the "absorbing new Wyeth exhibition" at the National Gallery of Art "built around a single, quiet motif in many variations: the window. The result of the carefully conceived installation, in which preparatory studies are grouped around more finished and often drastically simplified (in Wyeth's phrase, 'boiling down) paintings, is an increasingly immersive experience, an aesthetic revelation rather than a prurient one. The catalog essays, by National Gallery curators Nancy Anderson (on Wyeth's working process) and Charles Brock (comparing Wyeth's windows to two influences, Edward Hopper and the Pennyslvania precisionist Charles Sheeler), are understated, inquisitive, and well written—in English that, as Marianne Moore once said, cats and dogs can understand." Read more about Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In and Andrew Wyeth: A Spoken Self-Portrait. "Olson House" (1966), © Andrew Wyeth, is reproduced from Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In.