In 1986, Andrew Wyeth was the most famous painter in America. He was a household name, on the cover of magazines and tapped to paint presidents. And then he revealed a secret cache of 240 pieces of artwork, many provocative, all featuring the same nude female model. This collection, called The Helga Pictures, had been completed over 15 years and hidden from his wife, until they were revealed and wound up on the covers of both Time Magazine and Newsweek. The implication of these paintings were clear: Wyeth must have been having an affair, but then the story got complicated. Was it a genuine sex scandal? A hoax? Or something else entirely? Some of the voices you’ll hear in this episode include Doug McGill, former New York Times reporter; Neil Harris, author of Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience; Cathy Booth Thomas, former Time Magazine correspondent; Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, art historian and curator; Jeannie McDowell, former Time Magazine correspondent; Chris Lione, former art director at Art and Antiques; Joyce Stoner, Wyeth scholar; Peter Ralston, Wyeth photographer and friend; and Jim Duff, former director of the Brandywine River Museum. This episode was written by Willa Paskin and produced by Willa Paskin and Benjamin Frisch. It was edited by Benjamin Frisch and Gabriel Roth. We had research assistance from Cleo Levin. Decoder Ring is produced by Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. A very special thank you to Paula Scaire. If you haven’t yet, please subscribe and rate our feed in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And even better, tell your friends. If you’re a fan of the show, please sign up for Slate Plus. Members get to listen to Decoder Ring and all other Slate podcasts without any ads and have total access to Slate’s website. Your support is also crucial to our work. Go to Slate.com/decoderplus to join Slate Plus today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hi.
Today we have an episode for you that we first ran back in late 2021.
It's one of my favorites.
It's about Andrew Wyeth and a scandal, a painting scandal that took place in the 1980s.
It's a scandal that turned out to be less salacious than it first seemed, but more interpersonally fraught.
There's a great book called Parallel Five Victorian Marriages in which the author, Phyllis Rose, looks brilliantly and incisively into the incredible depth cont some long term partnerships.
And without comparing this episode to that book in quality in any way, I would say I was going for something in that spirit.
Enjoy.
Also, please know that this episode contains some strong language.
On the afternoon of August 5, 1986, Doug McGill was sitting at his desk at the New York Times when his phone rang.
I got a call from the news desk, which was the uber desk right in the middle of the newsroom, you know, to please come up there.
Doug had started at the Times as a copy, but he'd work his way up to arts reporter, focusing on the visual arts.
It wasn't that often that there was an urgently breaking art story, but that's exactly what the news desk wanted to talk to him about.
Somebody up there had received a press release from Arts and Antiques magazine about their forthcoming issue.
That press release talked about a cache of 240 paintings by Andrew Wyatt that he had kept secret from everybody, including his wife of a beautiful model, often naked.
Andrew Wyeth was the most popular and famous painter in America at the time.
Though his critical reputation was complicated, he was a household name on the COVID of magazines and tapped to paint presidents.
His work was grounded in the two rural communities in which he lived.
And that subject matter had established him as a paragon of Americana, sometimes referred to as America's artist.
And now here he was, nearing 70, apparently with a secret stash of intimate, provocative nude paintings of this one woman.