This book and the accompanying retrospective exhibition in Kansas City give us the rare 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 usin his thoughtful introductory essay, Andrew Wyeth and his work are extremely complex. Neither submits comfortably tothe categorizations into which much critical writing has tried to cast them. There has been the tendency to superimposeon the art preconceived critical positions limited by parochial boundaries rather than to try to understand the means Wyethexploits to reveal our times and our psyche with such compelling force. At once alluring and unsettling, the work strikesthe very heart of our emotional being, reminding us that art is ultimately about truth and the human condition.