Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life

by Roxana Robinson

Overview

One of the greatest and most admired artists of the twentieth century, Georgia O’Keeffe led a life rich in intense relationships—with family, friends, and especially with fellow artist Alfred Stieglitz. Her extraordinary accomplishments, such as the often eroticized flowers, bones, stones, skulls, and pelvises she painted with such command, are all the more remarkable when seen in the context of the struggle she waged between the rigorous demands of love and work.

When Roxana Robinson’s definitive biography of O’Keeffe was first published in 1989, it received rave reviews and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. This new edition features a new foreword by the author setting O’Keefe in an artistic context over the last thirty years since the book was first published, as well as previously unpublished letters of the young O’Keeffe to her lover, Arthur MacMahon. It also relates the story of Robinson’s own encounter with the artist. As interest in O’Keeffe continues to grow among museum-goers and scholars alike, this book remains indispensable for understanding her life and art.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684580323
Publisher:	Brandeis University Press
Publication date:	10/01/2020
Edition description:	Second Edition, Enlarged, Expanded Edition
Pages:	679
Sales rank:	521,697
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Roxana Robinson is an art historian and novelist. Among her books of fiction are This Is My Daughter, Asking for Love and Other Stories, Summer Light, and A Glimpse of Scarlet.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Expanded Edition ix

Acknowledgments xix

Part I 1877-1902 Sun Prairie: The Wide and Generous Land 1

Part II 1903-1918 Distant Skies: Explorations and Initiations 35

Part III 1919-1928 An Ordered Life: Manhattan and Lake George 201

Part IV 1929-1946 A Fair Division: New York and New Mexico 313

Part V 1947-1972 A Peaceful Life: The Land of Shining Stone 467

Part VI 1973-1986 Withdrawal: The Dying of the Light 521

Sources and Codes for Notes 561

Notes 565

Selected Bibliography 609

Index 617

Appendix Letters from Georgia O'Keeffe to Arthur Macmahon 1915-1938 637

Illustrations Sources and Credits 685

Editorial Reviews

The best book ever written on O’Keeffe. . . . An invaluable resource.

New Yorker - Calvin Tomkins

A profoundly human treatment of O’Keeffe and all the people who figured prominently in her life.

|Los Angeles Times

"thorough and immersive"

Hyperallergic

"Robinson’s comprehensive biography gives a vivid account of O’Keeffe’s remarkable artistic career."

The Art Newspaper

A profoundly human treatment of O’Keeffe and all the people who figured prominently in her life.

Los Angeles Times

...[D]oes much to give body to the O'Keeffe myth. The author presents a person who was both vulnerable and fiercepassionate and coolly withholdingsensuous yet oddly unsexual. —The New York Times Book Review1989

Hayden Herrera

This biography, the first to draw on sources unavailable during O'Keeffe's lifetime--and the first to be granted her family's cooperation--offers a persuasive feminist analysis of the life and work of an iconic figure in American art. Inspired by strong women in a Midwestern family that stressed a sturdy sense of self-reliance, O'Keeffe bucked oppressive social conventions to become one of the first female American artists to lead a professionally successful and emancipated life. But along the way lay struggle: O'Keeffe had to fight for emotional and artistic independence in her public and private lives, experiencing particular difficulties in her relationships with men, most notably her benefactor and husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Novelist Robinson's ( Summer Light ) detailed, sensitive critique of O'Keeffe's work, tracing the development of the artist's esthetic, alternates with an absorbing, intimate narrative of O'Keeffe's personal life (including her notorious relationship with Juan Hamilton, six decades her junior, and the public battle over her estate) to provide a resourceful, imaginatively rendered portrait of a dauntingly difficult subject. Photos not seen by PW. BOMC alternate. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The painter Georgia O'Keeffe lived a long and complicated life, and her work has become a cultural icon, so demand for this title should be great. It is by no means a definitive biography, however. Novelist Robinson has clearly done her homework, but the uses to which she puts it are sometimes curious. After quoting a passage from O'Keeffe's correspondence, she cannot resist reiterating what she thinks the painter felt, even though O'Keeffe has just told us. Elsewhere, the description of an early romantic relationship of O'Keeffe's is vividly delineated, but we learn only in a footnote that the letters on which the description is based are only conjecturally from the man in question. While Robinson at times veers toward sentimentality in writing about the artist's life, she never does so about the work, and she treats the emotional complexity of O'Keeffe's marriage to Alfred Stieglitz and relationship with her companion Juan Hamilton with intelligence and care. Still, she wears the reader out (it takes 200 pages to get to Stieglitz's first showing of her work). This might have been a happier book as a novelization. --GraceAnne A. DeCandido, ``Library Journal''

Library Journal

A big, impressive, and well crafted biography of a remarkable woman, artist, human. Robinson was able to gain the cooperation of the O'Keefe family. A fine job. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Robinson’s comprehensive biography gives a vivid account of O’Keeffe’s remarkable artistic career.”

Art Newspaper

Chockablock with intriguing detail…It gives us the first sensible discussion of how photography influenced O’Keeffe’s painting—her closeups, wide angles, cropping, distortion of scale, and zooms.”

Ms. Magazine

The best book ever written on O’Keeffe…An invaluable resource.”

New Yorker

Chockablock with intriguing detail, some apt insight, and best of all, O’Keeffe’s own voice – in her letters and in the words of her family and friends who wouldn’t talk to anyone before the artist’s death at the age of 98 in 1986. It gives us the first sensible discussion of how photography influenced O’Keeffe’s painting –her closeups, wide angles, cropping, distortion of scale, and zooms.”—Ms. Magazine

From the Publisher