How Georgia Became O'Keeffe (19 page)

BOOK: How Georgia Became O'Keeffe
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Here is the last lesson: Even when we are very old, all the people we ever were still live inside of us. We are just as surprised as anyone to have thinning hair, strange spots on our skin, folds on our back, and failing eyesight. Her entire life O'Keeffe had harbored a weakness for dark-eyed men who were full of themselves. Her sister Claudia thought Juan was no more than a common gigolo, but O'Keeffe became enchanted. She wasn't a complete idiot;
†††††
when Hamilton would try to compare himself to Stieglitz, whom he resembled, she always said the two men had nothing in common but her.

Say what you will about Juan Hamilton (and people have said plenty), he kept O'Keeffe going and connected to the world. He introduced her to ceramics, which she could do by feel. He helped her to complete a book and participate in a documentary about her life. In 1982, he took her to a show in San Francisco where one of her rare sculptures was being exhibited. Hamilton guided her hands along the piece, a large, elegant black spiral of cast aluminum, to help her “see” it. He made her laugh, according to other people who worked for her during that time, and in his presence she began to wear colors, even though she couldn't see them.

In those last years, pilgrims arrived on a regular basis. Gloria Steinem brought a bouquet of red roses and was turned away. Calvin Klein showed up and was given lunch and allowed to nap on her favorite daybed. Pete Seeger came by and played a song for her on a flute made out of a bird's leg.

Where should we leave O'Keeffe? Perhaps in her studio, painting one last watercolor, a blue abstraction, every bit as mysterious and compelling as those she made in 1918. As O'Keeffe's contemporary Dorothy Parker once said, “There are no happy endings.” Georgia O'Keeffe died of natural causes in St. Vincent's Hospital Santa Fe on March 6, 1986. She was ninety-eight.

I couldn't write about Georgia O'Keeffe without seeing Ghost Ranch. As per our plans, we arrived the day after our stay at the Mable Dodge Luhan House in Taos. The ice crystals I'd seen falling from the sky that morning had become your standard issue history-making spring blizzard that afternoon. The windshield wipers couldn't keep up with the heavy flakes. The visibility was five feet, possibly six. At O'Keeffe's Ghost Ranch there were no blizzards in May, only sandstone cliffs rising up into the vast blue sky, only beauty so singular it couldn't help but transform you. We crawled up Highway 68, found the turnoff, and slithered up the slick, red-clay road to ranch headquarters, where we checked into the RV campground.

We were the only people in the place. We sat and watched the snow fall all afternoon. This was no spring squall. It could have been December. We could have been in any snowy place. By late afternoon the snow let up a bit and we went for a walk. The wet clay adhered to the soles of our boots until our feet became too awkward and heavy to lift. We took pictures of our boots—adobe platforms!—and of ourselves slipping and sliding in the mud, and of the cherry trees in bloom, covered in snow, and of ourselves pretending to admire the nonexistent vistas. Then we scurried back to the RV, where we split a can of chicken noodle soup.

The next morning the western sky had cleared, and there was the Pedernal, blue-gray and flat-topped, looking both close and faraway, just as it did in O'Keeffe's pictures. We were eager to be on our way and hastily performed all the tasks traveling in an RV demands: pulling in the bedroom and the living area, stowing the plates and glasses. As we drove down the main road to the highway, we saw a man standing in the middle of a wide snowy flat taking a picture of the Pedernal.

As we got closer, the man turned out to be a woman. She was wearing black pants and a black jacket. We were the only vehicle for miles around. There were no cars parked by the side of the road, no horse standing around waiting for his rider. The Indians in this part of the world believe that the spirits of people who died here walk the land after they're gone. I don't believe it. I don't even like New Mexico much. I'm more of an ocean person. But as we approached her we heard something crash at the back of the RV. Jerrod pulled over to investigate. One of the cupboard doors hadn't been closed properly and a can of soup had fallen out.

Within minutes we were back on the road, but the woman in black had vanished.

†
A note O'Keeffe wrote to herself inside the front cover of one of her cookbooks.

‡
These were a new set of nay-saying males. The notable objectors were the painters Edward Hopper and John Sloan.

§
A complete collection of the best existing prints of a mounted photograph in a photographer's oeuvre. Like everything else about Stieglitz, his key set was monumental, numbering 1,642 photos.

¶
Pretty much the dream of every middle-aged woman I know, who's had it with worrying about the state of the water heater and who the fuck is going to mow the lawn (not me, that's for sure).

*
An oxymoron in my book, but I realize this is not a view shared by everyone.

††
My mother's word, a cross between “nut job” and “fruit cake.”

‡‡
With a lot of local help, it must be continuously noted.

§§
Maria Chabot–Georgia O'Keeffe: Correspondence, 1941–1949,
edited by Barbara Buhler Lynes and Ann Paden.

¶¶
No one ever said Zen simplicity was cheap.

**
Georgia chose one from her abstract
In the Patio
series.

†††
In more ways than one.

§§§
According to Dr. Oz, it feels like someone is doing yoga for you. Against your will, I might add.

¶¶¶
Your mind can still be blown by this piece at the Brooklyn Museum.

***
Then as now, we still have vaginas.

††††
Georgia offered Bry more money. Bry was happy to take it. She found Norman to be undiscriminating in her taste and otherwise “slushy.”

‡‡‡‡
Somewhere along the way O'Keeffe dropped Dorothy Brett, her compatriot from her early New Mexico years, because she felt she'd gotten too fat.

§§§§
Ida had died in 1961.

¶¶¶¶
She also built a gym, so the kids would have somewhere to play in the snowy winters, and donated $50,000 for the building of a new elementary school.

****
O'Keeffe was far too old to know that every one of that generation who ever successfully threw a pot in his high school art class considered himself to be a potter.

†††††
Perhaps only 75 percent.

Acknowledgments

With each book it becomes harder to adequately thank my literary pit crew who, over months and years, cheers me on, listens to my endless complaints, turns a blind eye when I stomp around in a bad mood, brings me burritos, asks how it's going (often at their own peril), forces me to go to yoga or even just run around the block for God's sake, reads and rereads my manuscript, offers constructive criticism even though it might result in a beheading, promotes my unsung genius to dubious strangers, and responds to neurotic e-mails with respect and good humor.

Among them, my agents at Inkwell Management, Kim Witherspoon and David Forrer, support my work and believe in me in a way that qualifies them for superhero status.

Likewise, I cannot say thank you enough to my editor
par excellence
Lara Asher, and everyone else at Globe Pequot: Gail Blackhall, Shana Capozza, Allyson Coughlin, Himeka Curiel, Melissa Hayes, Sheryl Kober, Jennifer McKay, and Kristen Mellitt.

I am also deeply grateful for Jerrod Allen, Fiona Baker, David Biespiel, Hilary Black, Hannah Concannon, Kim Dower, Debbie Guyol, Karen Rae Johnson, Stephanie Loftis, Whitney Otto, Danna Schaeffer, and Cheryl Strayed.

A special thanks also goes to the wise women of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum: Barbara Buhler Lynes, Eumie Imm-Stroukoff, Elizabeth Ehrnst, and Fran Martone.

I cracked wise about the length of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum's Bibliography, but in truth it's a fantastic resource, available online at www.okeeffemuseum.org.

Some O'Keeffe biographies I'm especially fond of, whose margins are now filled with my scribbles include,
Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe
by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp;
O'Keeffe and Stieglitz: An American Romance
by Benita Eisler;
Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe
by Laurie Lisle;
Georgia O'Keeffe
by Roxana Robinson.

Other books that captivated me and helped me more fully understand the complex woman behind the art:
O'Keeffe
by Britta Benke;
Georgia O'Keeffe: In the West
, edited by Doris Bry and Nicholas Callaway;
Georgia O'Keeffe and the Camera: The Art of Identity
by Susan Danly;
Georgia O'Keeffe at Ghost Ranch: A Photo Essay
by John Leongard;
O'Keeffe, Stieglitz and the Critics, 1916–1929
by Barbara Buhler Lynes;
Weekends with O'Keeffe
by C.S. Merrill;
From the Faraway Nearby: Georgia O'Keeffe as Icon
, edited by Christopher Merrill and Ellen Bradbury;
Some Memories of Drawings
by Georgia O'Keeffe;
Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction
[exhibition catalog, Whitney Museum of American Art];
Miss O'Keeffe
by Christine Taylor Patten and Alvaro Cardona-Hine;
In a Painter's Kitchen: Recipes from the Kitchen of Georgia O'Keeffe
by Margaret Wood.

For a woman who said, famously, that she and words were not good friends, O'Keeffe wrote a staggering amount of letters. These collections capture her intelligence, humor, and esprit:
Lovingly Georgia: The Complete Correspondence of Georgia O'Keeffe & Anita Pollitzer
, edited by Clive Giboire;
My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, Vol. 1 (1915–1933)
, edited by Sarah Greenough;
Maria Chabot–Georgia O'Keeffe: Correspondence, 1941–1949
, edited by Barbara Buhler Lynes.

Finally, the astounding two-volume, 1198-page
Georgia O'Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonne
, assembled by Barbara Buhler Lynes, depicts every piece of art made by O'Keeffe (2,045) during her lifetime, and confirms, in case there was any doubt, what all the fuss is about.

About the Author

Susan Seubert

Karen Karbo's first novel,
Trespassers Welcome Here
, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Village Voice Top Ten Book of the Year. Her other two adult novels,
The Diamond Lane
and
Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me
, were also named NYT Notable Books. Her 2004 memoir,
The Stuff of Life
, about the last year she spent with her father before his death, was an NYT Notable Book, a People Magazine Critics' Choice, a Books for a Better Life Award finalist, and a winner of the Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her short stories, essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in
Elle
,
Vogue
,
Esquire
,
Outside
, the
New York Times
,
Salon.com
, and other magazines. She is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, and a winner of the General Electric Younger Writer Award.

How to Hepburn
, published in 2007, was hailed by the
Philadelphia Inquirer
as “an exuberant celebration of a great original”;
The Gospel According to Coco Chanel
(skirt!), published in 2009, was a BookScan bestseller. Karen grew up in Los Angeles, California, and lives in Portland, Oregon, where she continues to kick ass.

BOOK: How Georgia Became O'Keeffe
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