Sex Is Sex, Love Is Love, Hype Is Hype

Would-be news managers in Washington should sit at the feet of Betsy Wyeth and Jeffrey Schaire, editor of Art & Antiques magazine, the two impresarios of the story of Andrew Wyeth’s secret paintings. Rarely have so few caused so many to make so much fuss about so little. The lesson: While it may be hard to con the media for long, it’s not so hard to trap them in a conspiracy of hype.

The story, as originally presented, had three elements. First, a secret cache of paintings and drawings by a leading painter, hidden even from his wife and revealed only when he thought that he was dying. Second, the subject of the pictures: a mystery woman named “Helga,” whose identity is also a deep secret. Third, the question of Wyeth’s relationship with the mystery woman. Every initial news story quoted Mrs. Wyeth’s dramatic one-word explanation of her husband’s motive in this project: “Love.”

A large addition to the Wyeth oeuvre may be important to the art world. But front pages across the country? Features on the evening television news? The covers of both Time and Newsweek? Come on. It is not unusual for a living artist, especially a wealthy one, to have stacks of paintings that he hasn’t put on the market. Wyeth was well-known, among people who cared before last week, for producing a lot but selling very little. Nor is it especially amazing for an artist to protect the identity of someone who modeled for him in the nude. As for the sex angle, well, “Artist Sleeps With Model” is surely a “Dog Bites Man” story. But it’s August, after all.

The first wave of publicity is understandable. The real journalistic comedy began after the initial “revelation.” Over the next week you could watch the story building and unraveling at the same time. This process culminated with the two news-magazine cover articles, which heralded Wyeth’s “Stunning Secret” (Time) and “Secret Obsession” (Newsweek, the winner) even as they reported information that undermined the whole premise.

How secret were these pictures? Not very. One was reproduced a year ago in Art & Antiques. Several have been on display for years in the museum at Chadds Ford, Pa., Wyeth’s hometown. Another was reproduced on a French poster several years ago, and yet another was published in an art magazine in 1979. Mrs. Wyeth, who is her husband’s business manager (and a helluva good one), has actually sold three of those Helga portraits over the years.

It turns out that it was Mrs. Wyeth who gave the provocative name “Lovers” to the painting of Helga, nude but alone, that has stirred the most interest. Far from hiding this picture from his wife, Andrew Wyeth gave it to her four years ago. Regarding the size of the cache, Art & Antiques quoted Wyeth a year ago as saying, “There’s a whole vast amount of my work no one knows about.”

And the mystery woman? A hilarious second-day story in the New York Times portrayed a Twilight Zone atmosphere in Chadds Ford, with all the locals intent--”fiercely,” of course--on protecting the town’s dark secret from the inquiring outsider. “Down the street at the Sunoco station . . . the reply was terse: ‘No, I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’ ”

Unfortunately, the mystery quickly dissolved. Within a day, more voluble, or possibly better informed, sources than the Sunoco station attendant identified the model as Helga Testorf. Contrary to reports, she has not fled to Germany. According to Time, she “lives with her husband in a secluded home across town from the Wyeths.” It develops that Mrs. Testorf has worked all along as a cook and cleaning lady for Andrew Wyeth’s sister, Carolyn. Betsy Wyeth insisted to Time that she never saw Helga because she “never visits her sister-in-law.” It’s possible. But Washington artist Vint Lawrence recalls attending a dinner in Wyeth’s honor some years ago at the Chadds Ford museum, where several Helga paintings were on display and Helga herself was in attendance.

Which brings us to “love.” After six days of publicity, Mrs. Wyeth granted a telephone interview to the New York Times in which she explained that the love in question was “the love for hills, the love for breathing, the love for storms and snows.” The obviously disappointed reporter got her to “acknowledge the possibility of sexual feelings in the model-artist relationship,” adding with hopeful caution that she “said she believed such feelings were never consummated.”

Meanwhile, though, Andrew Wyeth told a local paper that he has a deep love for anything he paints, whether it be “a tree, a model, a house or a hill,” and, “No, that doesn’t mean sexual, of course.” Oh, well. Artist Doesn’t Sleep With Model. Man Bites Dog?