Becoming O'Keeffe: The Early Years [Hardcover]

Sarah Whitaker Peters (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1991

Covering the period 1915 to 1930, with flashbacks to O'Keefe's studies in Chicago and New York, this book captures the intensity, courage, and intelligence of the artist's search for her own unique expression. Even those who think they know all about O'Keefe will be surprised by what this book has to say. 150 illustrations, 48 in full color.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1915 Georgia O'Keeffe was an oddly reckless 27-year-old college art teacher in South Carolina. By 1918 she was living and working with photographer Alfred Stieglitz, her future husband, who inspired her synthesis of painting and photography. Art historian Peters, who has taught at the University of Long Island, revealingly tracks the couple's fruitful collaboration by juxtaposing Stieglitz's lyrical photographs of Lake George, N.Y., with O'Keeffe's spiritual landscapes of the same terrain. One can also trace a progression in Stieglitz's photo-portraits of O'Keeffe, which become less obsessive and more objective. In 1929-1930, her trips to Taos, N.M., reacquainted her with Pueblo sand paintings, songs and dances which helped her tap a "primordial . . . therapeutic power" in her own art, according to Peters. Focusing on the period 1915-1930, this richly rewarding, stunningly illustrated study pinpoints influences, from art nouveau to Kandinsky, which O'Keeffe absorbed.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this thoughtful and thought-provoking art historical study, Peters first traces strands of Art Nouveau and Symbolist theory in the art of Georgia O'Keeffe. She then discusses other influences, from Arthur Dow as teacher to Paul Strand as photographer and friend. But by far the most sustained study in the text is the relationship between O'Keeffe's painting and the photography and philosophy of her husband, Alfred Stieglitz. Peters argues lucidly and always in accessible language for O'Keeffe's emergence as a great and deeply individual artist while illuminating these many influences and illustrating her points with lavish use of excellent reproductions. This is the most intelligent book yet done on O'Keeffe. A worthy purchase for most collections.
- GraceAnne A. DeCandido, "School Library Journal"
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Abbeville Pr; 1st edition (September 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0896599078
• ISBN-13: 978-0896599079
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,128,677 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Doorway into Early O'Keeffe, December 18, 2006

By 

William B. Jones - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Becoming O'Keeffe: The Early Years (Paperback)

Having viewed the recent Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit on "Colors and Conservation" in Rochester, NY (which Mississippi Museum of Art-originated exhibit has its own, fine catalogue), I found this volume most illuminative regarding O'Keeffe's relationships as they informed her development as an artist. As a example of the type of "close reading" undertaken by the author here, the background offered on O'Keeffe's "Lake George Farmhouse Door" (near the close of the book, though only halfway through O'Keeffe's life) suggests it may be taken as a response of sorts to her husband's earlier photograph of a smiling, younger woman posed in front of the same doorway.

The author thus raises questions on creative transformations involved in making art. Why, for example, is the door-glass opaque in the artist's painting instead of something we can see through in her husband's photograph? Does her rendering of their summer home's door suggest a way into or a blocking out from the artist's own life, as the photo itself is held to suggest of the woman depicted in it? One does not need this sort of background in order to appreciate the painting itself, held by MoMA, but those seeking autobiographical insights on O'Keeffe's early work should find "Becoming O'Keeffe" intriguing reading.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars One writer who does not "get" O'Keeffe, September 9, 2006

By 

Spots "shialavati" (Beavercreek, OR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Becoming O'Keeffe: The Early Years (Paperback)

I am irritated by writers who purport to know the inner thoughts of people who are no longer alive to defend themselves. Peters has collected plenty of information on what was going on in the American and European art worlds, and it's worth reading for that. There are also some works here I haven't seen in other books. But if Peters wants to understand O'Keeffe's state of mind and approach to her work, why take O'Keeffe's perfectly clear and straightforward writings and then negate them in favor of hyperbolic, overwrought analysis? Having to repeatedly reject an artist's own words and play the game of "What she really meant was..." is a good sign that you don't understand the subject. Why are O'Keeffe's simple words so hard for her to comprehend? Peters' analogies stretch far past the point of usefulness: a closed window equals a camera lens? Paintings of trees become "prototypes" for paintings of crosses made 5 years later? Does she mean O'Keeffe was really trying to paint crosses, and they just came out looking like trees? Or that the first time O'Keeffe saw a cross she thought "Oh, that looks like a tree"? This book isn't nearly as much about O'Keeffe as it is about what Peters would have been doing if she could magically take O'Keeffe's place. Maybe Peters gets really confused about simple actions, like putting a drawing on the floor, because she's never done much artwork. Sometimes you have to put things on the floor because in the facilities you have available, that's the easiest way to see and work on them. I think the lesson here is that if you have to change something to your own words to understand it, you're no longer perceiving that thing--you're only perceiving yourself. Peters spends a lot of time here reflecting her own thought process, and in doing so, misses not only O'Keeffe, but maybe visual art itself.