(Provided by and available from at a substantial discount: Librarian's Video Service, 184 East Main St., Middletown, CT 06457-0468). From a distinguished artistic family, Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) is a painter & draftsman who developed under the watchful eye of his father, artist/illustrator N.C. Scriptwriter Alvin Martin focuses, in particular, on Wyeth's themes of fertility, the ages of woman, and the seasonal cycles of nature, and how Wyeth, long dismissed as provincial, may best be understood as an introspective romantic. Ultimately, The Helga Pictures is a telling tale of a persistence of vision & technique from a perspective that's both objective & personal. The video, hosted by Charlton Heston, and shot in and around Wyeth's home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, is an engaging overview of the artist's life, his past work, and 44 of the Helga pictures (including 22 of the now infamous nudes). Gossip dies harder than cockroaches, but today the Helga pictures are accepted for what they are: an impressive collection of recent art by a major American artist. Who, the muckrakers asked, was this woman? What was her relationship to Wyeth? Etc., etc., etc. When the "Helga" pictures, a collection of some 240 tempura, drybrush, watercolors, and pencil drawings of a woman named Helga Testorf, created by American artist Andrew Wyeth, were made known to the public in August of 1986-the media had a frisky little heyday.
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