O'Keefe: the Life of an American Legend: The Life of an American Legend
One of this century's most beloved and celebrated artists, Georgia O'Keeffe transmitted her most intimate feelings onto her canvases. But the details of her private life were zealously guarded, leaving the world to wonder: What was the inspiration, and the impetus, for her sexually charged flower paintings? What was the nature of her relationship with her much older husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz? Why did she lie about her past and hide herself from her public?
Journalist and author Jeffrey Hogrefe discloses the answers to these questions and more in O'Keeffe, a richly detailed biography that illuminates much of the mystery and intrigue that surround Georgia O'Keeffe, and finally reveals the real woman behind the legend. Hogrefe's encounter with the ninety-three-year-old artist and with Juan Hamilton, the young man she loved in her final years, provided him with unique insights into her private world, as well as into Hamilton's own controversial relationship with O'Keeffe during the last fourteen years of her life.
Her acerbic personality, her unconventional lifestyle, and her struggles as an artist and a woman are brought to life in this definitive biography.
Publisher: Bantam
Published: United States, 31 December 1999
Format: Paperback / softback, 448 pages
Age Range: 0+
Other Information: illustrations
Dimensions: 14 x 2.5 x 21.6 centimeters (0.59 kg)
Writer: Hogrefe, Jeffrey
Reviews
How did a gaunt, fearful schoolteacher from the Texas Panhandle become the best-known American woman artist of the century? This engrossing biography of Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) sweeps away myths and legends. An icon of self-reliance whose life in the New Mexico desert has inspired feminists, the acerbic and imperious O'Keeffe, in Hogrefe's candid portrait, tended to dominate other women and looked up to certain men as superior beings. Her husband, New York photographer and art impresario Alfred Stieglitz, 23 years her senior, was a parental figure, the foundation against which she would rebel.'' Hogrefe, a former Washington Post arts columnist, attributes O'Keeffe's frequent rages to suppressed memories of childhood incest. Following a series of nervous breakdowns, O'Keeffe came to accept her bisexuality.The victim became the victimizer,'' subjugating a series of women who worshiped her like a goddess, in Hogrefe's account. Drawing on interviews, he sympathetically limns Juan Hamilton, the volatile young artist who cared for the elderly O'Keeffe, and whom many critics portray as a villain preying on an old lady. O'Keeffe's artistic achievements seem all the more remarkable in light of this searchingly critical yet affectionate biography, a remarkable piece of detective work. Photos. (Aug.)
Hogrefe has pared down Georgia O'Keeffe's 98 years to a series of sexual liaisons with members of both genders, culminating with her controversial relationship with the young sculptor Juan Hamilton, decades her junior. Interspersed among the descriptions of O'Keeffe's affairs or attempted seductions are the increasingly famous artist's dealings with Jackie Kennedy, Joni Mitchell, Calvin Klein, and Elizabeth Arden. Hogrefe has minimized the art historical critiques or interpretations of O'Keeffe's work, giving us not O'Keeffe the artist but a voyeuristic--though not unsympathetic--peep into the daily life of one of America's most famous painters. This latest biography falls short of the two others published since O'Keeffe's death in 1986, Roxana Robinson's Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life ( LJ 9/15/89) and Laurie Lisle's Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe , which was revised and enlarged following the artist's death in 1986 (Univ. of New Mexico Pr., 1986). Recommended only for O'Keeffe completists.-- Martin R. Kalfatovic, Natl. Museum of American Art/Natl. Portrait Gallery Lib., Smithsonian Inst., Washington, D.C.
"A frank, compassionate, and memorable study of the woman behind the legend and her ravishing creations."
--Booklist
"This engrossing biography of Georgia O'Keeffe sweeps away myths and legends....a remarkable piece of detective work."
--Publishers Weekly
"Hogrefe manages to be both fair and compassionate in his treatment of a difficult woman--who also happens to be one of our most dazzling national treasures."
--Edmund White
"A historic, in-depth study of what it means to risk one's life to be an artist. It is also a depiction of sexual confusions, ironic outrage and rage, and the shedding of society's armor to create a female knight in pursuit of a vision. Georgia O'Keeffe is the one woman who was there first in the world of art."
--Sandra Hochman