One of the topics
much discussed in reaction to the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition at the
Tate Modern has been the nature of her relationship with Alfred
Steiglitz. Almost twenty years ago, the Metropolitan Museum in New
York staged an exhibition of Steiglitz's photographs of O'Keeffe,
itself an expansion of another show nearly 20 years before that,
which revealed much about that relationship. Every couple of decades, it would seem, O'Keeffe herself and the influence of Steiglitz have to be re-evaluated. This was what I saw twenty years ago, originally written for the FT, but held until the exhibition in New York had already finished, then spiked.
AN ALMOST VIOLENT PURITY OF SPIRITGeorgia O'Keeffe portraits by Alfred Steiglitz
Georgia O’Keeffe’s
paintings have become commercial icons. Animal skulls dried by the
desert, adobe chapels, lush sexual flowers, tall thrusting
cityscapes, all part of an instantly recognisable and popular style.
O’Keeffe herself has become part of that iconography, just as
recognisable. Her face, with its strong sharp features, piercing
intelligence, and deep eyes, echoes the visual images of her work.
Yet, as this exhibition shows, that image is itself a work of art, a
construct that arose from the unlikely artistic partnership of one of
the major figures of modernism in America with an unknown student. Over the next thirty years, it would produce nearly 400 prints.
In 1916 Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery was the centre of modern art in America. His journal Camera Work was almost single-handedly turning photography into an art form. O’Keeffe was a 28 year-old unsuccessful artist who had taught in South Carolina and Texas and was now taking classes at Columbia. A friend had passed O’Keeffe’s drawings on to Sieglitz because she knew how much she admired him and his immediate reaction was “at last, a woman on paper!” He exhibited the drawings at 291, getting the state wrong as he billed her as “Virginia O’Keeffe”, but overwhelming with his understanding of her art O’Keeffe’s protestations at being taken up by him. And by his understanding of her art's impact. The gallery which had introduced America to Brancusi, John Marin and Marsden Hartley was now causing a bigger stir. The powerful erotic energy which Stieglitz recognised in O’Keffee’s abstract drawings disturbed many of New York’s critics, even those in the would-be avant-garde.
Stieglitz was keen to introduce women into the modernist movement (Camera Work gave Gertrude Stein her first appearance in print), but where on the one hand he was promoting O'Keeffe's work, encouraging her as an artist, on the other he also began using her as a model, and it is difficult to avoid the sense of her romantic, as well as artistic, objectification.
At the beginning, Stieglitz was taken by the abstract possibilities of O’Keeffe’s remarkably strong, sharp features. He is particularly attentive to her hands. Her long fingers both frame other objects to give them a geometric quality, and provide an abstract shape of their own. If modernism was about isolating the pure geometric volume from forms,
Stieglitz was already beginning to move past that abstraction
with O’Keeffe. But his photos quickly came to
reflect the growing intimacy between photographer and subject. The
quest for abstract shapes recedes, as Steiglitz becomes more and more
fascinated with O’Keefe’s body, its combination of grace and
power, of stark angles and edges softened by deep curves: her breasts
against her shoulders, her hips balanced by her legs. The same
qualities he had originally captured in her hands he would continue
to reveal in her face.
The stark force of her face was muted somewhat by O’Keeffe’s wonderfully expressive eyes. This expressiveness turns Steiglitz’s modernism transcendental: he had discovered a human form in nature which could both generate and convey the equivalent of his deepest inner experiences. Original as it seemed to him, he was also recapitulating what O’Keeffe had already made the central aim of her own art.
By 1919-20, the photographs have become more intimate, even obsessive. Abstract nudes give way to extreme sensuality, O’Keeffe setting her hair, squeezing her breasts, displaying her feet. They caused a scandal when exhibited, and even today there is something almost fetishistic about them. The scandal was intensified, no doubt, by the fact that they were living together openly, despite the fact that Stieglitz was married. Eventually, Steiglitz would take these 'scandalous' shots off the market.
After Stieglitz was divorced in 1924, he
persuaded O’Keeffe to marry him. She saw no point in the added
respectability of marriage, and perhaps predictably, Stieglitz’s
camera at this point appears to lose its fire. He begins producing
more mundane portraits, as if the very idea of being Mr. and Mrs.
Stieglitz were the antithesis of their concept of modernist art and
modern life. Reflecting their increasing time apart, the pictures
become almost chaste. O’Keeffe began to spend more time travelling,
while Stieglitz preferred the familiar environs of New York City and
his house upstate on Lake George. Some of his passion transferred to
his other major series of prints, shot at Lake George, of abstract
shapes from nature, particularly clouds. These correspond with his
emotions, in much the same way that parts of O’Keeffe’s body once
had, but they never recapitulate the total emotional commitment of
his 1920 portraits.
But as their relationship, and his photographs of her, became less intimate, Stieglitz finally began to portray O’Keeffe as an artist, rather than a model. He now seemed more involved with the work than its creator, and he began to reveal the iconic O’Keeffe so familiar to us today. Now the sharp angles of her face, the deep gaze of her eyes, the dynamic power of her body reflect what the artist and poet Marsden Hartley called the “almost violent purity of spirit” in her work.
Although Dorothy Norman took O’Keeffe’s place in the passionate intimacy of Stieglitz’s life, and O’Keeffe began to winter far away in New Mexico, they spent summers together each year at Lake George.
By now
she was travelling through New Mexico in an A-Model Ford, with the
back seat removed and converted into a mobile art studio. Her freedom
seems to have fascinated Stieglitz, who photographed O’Keeffe’s
hands, once again almost as abstract framing, caressing the
wheel-covers of a V-8 car. The triumph of man over the energy of
machines is an important part of both their work, but O’Keeffe’s
hands give the picture its impact, inserting a human dimension to
keep the powerful shape of the machine in its place, in fact, turning
it into something to be caressed, if not an item of fashion.
There is a wonderful 1932 portrait of O’Keeffe in a head-scarf, looking out the front window of her car as if auditioning for the Bonnie Parker role in Bonnie And Clyde. As she gets older, her face seems to grow deeper, its angles more involving, stronger and more shadowy at the same time.
What is clear from these photos is
that a relationship which may have started very much as pupil and
teacher, and soon deepened into romance, eventually extended beyond
romance into art. After the passion faded, they transcended the
bounds of artistic or romantic definition. If Stieglitz’s images of
her helped mould our perception of her as an artist, her vision as an
artist helped Stieglitz find new means of expression through his
camera.
“When I look at the photographs Stieglitz took of me, I wonder who that person is,” O’Keeffe wrote for a 1978 retrospective, some 60 years after those first pictures had been taken. Whoever that person was then, she is now the figure whose features, as captured by Stieglitz, reflect perfectly Marsden Hartley's perception of her work's violent purity.
In 1916 Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery was the centre of modern art in America. His journal Camera Work was almost single-handedly turning photography into an art form. O’Keeffe was a 28 year-old unsuccessful artist who had taught in South Carolina and Texas and was now taking classes at Columbia. A friend had passed O’Keeffe’s drawings on to Sieglitz because she knew how much she admired him and his immediate reaction was “at last, a woman on paper!” He exhibited the drawings at 291, getting the state wrong as he billed her as “Virginia O’Keeffe”, but overwhelming with his understanding of her art O’Keeffe’s protestations at being taken up by him. And by his understanding of her art's impact. The gallery which had introduced America to Brancusi, John Marin and Marsden Hartley was now causing a bigger stir. The powerful erotic energy which Stieglitz recognised in O’Keffee’s abstract drawings disturbed many of New York’s critics, even those in the would-be avant-garde.
Stieglitz was keen to introduce women into the modernist movement (Camera Work gave Gertrude Stein her first appearance in print), but where on the one hand he was promoting O'Keeffe's work, encouraging her as an artist, on the other he also began using her as a model, and it is difficult to avoid the sense of her romantic, as well as artistic, objectification.
At the beginning, Stieglitz was taken by the abstract possibilities of O’Keeffe’s remarkably strong, sharp features. He is particularly attentive to her hands. Her long fingers both frame other objects to give them a geometric quality, and provide an abstract shape of their own. If modernism was about isolating the pure geometric volume from forms,
Stieglitz was already beginning to move past that abstraction
with O’Keeffe. But his photos quickly came to
reflect the growing intimacy between photographer and subject. The
quest for abstract shapes recedes, as Steiglitz becomes more and more
fascinated with O’Keefe’s body, its combination of grace and
power, of stark angles and edges softened by deep curves: her breasts
against her shoulders, her hips balanced by her legs. The same
qualities he had originally captured in her hands he would continue
to reveal in her face.The stark force of her face was muted somewhat by O’Keeffe’s wonderfully expressive eyes. This expressiveness turns Steiglitz’s modernism transcendental: he had discovered a human form in nature which could both generate and convey the equivalent of his deepest inner experiences. Original as it seemed to him, he was also recapitulating what O’Keeffe had already made the central aim of her own art.
By 1919-20, the photographs have become more intimate, even obsessive. Abstract nudes give way to extreme sensuality, O’Keeffe setting her hair, squeezing her breasts, displaying her feet. They caused a scandal when exhibited, and even today there is something almost fetishistic about them. The scandal was intensified, no doubt, by the fact that they were living together openly, despite the fact that Stieglitz was married. Eventually, Steiglitz would take these 'scandalous' shots off the market.
After Stieglitz was divorced in 1924, he
persuaded O’Keeffe to marry him. She saw no point in the added
respectability of marriage, and perhaps predictably, Stieglitz’s
camera at this point appears to lose its fire. He begins producing
more mundane portraits, as if the very idea of being Mr. and Mrs.
Stieglitz were the antithesis of their concept of modernist art and
modern life. Reflecting their increasing time apart, the pictures
become almost chaste. O’Keeffe began to spend more time travelling,
while Stieglitz preferred the familiar environs of New York City and
his house upstate on Lake George. Some of his passion transferred to
his other major series of prints, shot at Lake George, of abstract
shapes from nature, particularly clouds. These correspond with his
emotions, in much the same way that parts of O’Keeffe’s body once
had, but they never recapitulate the total emotional commitment of
his 1920 portraits.But as their relationship, and his photographs of her, became less intimate, Stieglitz finally began to portray O’Keeffe as an artist, rather than a model. He now seemed more involved with the work than its creator, and he began to reveal the iconic O’Keeffe so familiar to us today. Now the sharp angles of her face, the deep gaze of her eyes, the dynamic power of her body reflect what the artist and poet Marsden Hartley called the “almost violent purity of spirit” in her work.
Although Dorothy Norman took O’Keeffe’s place in the passionate intimacy of Stieglitz’s life, and O’Keeffe began to winter far away in New Mexico, they spent summers together each year at Lake George.
By now
she was travelling through New Mexico in an A-Model Ford, with the
back seat removed and converted into a mobile art studio. Her freedom
seems to have fascinated Stieglitz, who photographed O’Keeffe’s
hands, once again almost as abstract framing, caressing the
wheel-covers of a V-8 car. The triumph of man over the energy of
machines is an important part of both their work, but O’Keeffe’s
hands give the picture its impact, inserting a human dimension to
keep the powerful shape of the machine in its place, in fact, turning
it into something to be caressed, if not an item of fashion.There is a wonderful 1932 portrait of O’Keeffe in a head-scarf, looking out the front window of her car as if auditioning for the Bonnie Parker role in Bonnie And Clyde. As she gets older, her face seems to grow deeper, its angles more involving, stronger and more shadowy at the same time.
What is clear from these photos is
that a relationship which may have started very much as pupil and
teacher, and soon deepened into romance, eventually extended beyond
romance into art. After the passion faded, they transcended the
bounds of artistic or romantic definition. If Stieglitz’s images of
her helped mould our perception of her as an artist, her vision as an
artist helped Stieglitz find new means of expression through his
camera.“When I look at the photographs Stieglitz took of me, I wonder who that person is,” O’Keeffe wrote for a 1978 retrospective, some 60 years after those first pictures had been taken. Whoever that person was then, she is now the figure whose features, as captured by Stieglitz, reflect perfectly Marsden Hartley's perception of her work's violent purity.
Georgia O'Keeffe: A
Portrait by Alfred Stieglitz
Metropolitan Museum
of Art, October 1997
Exhibition
catalogue, expanded from the 1978 edition, published
by the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1997, ISBN 9780300086102
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