Customer Reviews

O'Keefe: The Life of an American Legend

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a good book, but the author does not seem to like either O-Keeffe or her husband Stieglitz. He covers their art a bit but without enthusiasm and instead seems to target their personal foibles and sexual peccadillos, which were many and indeed strange. This is valid reporting and ceratinly covers a necessary part of the story, but after a while it gets boring. However, in many sections the author speculates in strange ways on details of their intimate life that cannot be known, such as positiing that the origin of O'Keeffe's "discreet lesbianism" came from cryptically documented (hence essentially unprovable) sexual molestation as a child. If you want to look at the art, you have to go elsewhere. I enjoyed this as a vacation book but did not learn much from it beyond gossip.

It's incredible how much less fun a biography is to read when the author seems to hate his or her subject. Why would they choose to spend hours and hours of research on somebody if they don't think that the person is worth it? It must be some sort of competition.
I found myself frequently thinking back to the Frida Kahlo bio written by Hayden Herrera. In that, the biographer's admiration for the artist was infectious, and was based on her body of work, which was illustrated throughout the book. But in this case, there are hardly any reproductions, because the writer concentrates on gossip and O'keeffe's shortcomings.
However, the biography is very thorough and addictive in a guilty pleasure sort of way.

I agree with several of the reviewers that this work focuses too much on voyeuristic sexual revelations (and speculations) rather than on the artistic dimensions of O'Keeffe's work and life. I have only read half the book, but will unlikely go on, opting, rather, for a more profound and aesthetically engaged treatment of her life. One wonders when biography becomes gossip.

My wife and I have read three great biographies of O'Keefe, but this is the only one that really gets inside the heads of Georgia, Alfred, and many of her friends. I believe fully in this book's credibility, and with it you will learn countless personal things about O'Keefe that are filtered out in the other biographies, all of which seem to have been written more to please her family. While she isn't always presented in a favorable light in this one, you will appreciate her even more as an astonishingly original individual by reading this version of her magnificent life.

Excellent service in receiving the book and the book itself was excellent, inspiring and well written.