I as quickly as met Georgia O’Keeffe. This was not easy to do, and I considered it an achievement.
It was throughout the early nineteen-seventies, as soon as I used to be in my early twenties. I was working at Sotheby’s, in New York, throughout the American work division. One in every of many points I did there was catalogue the works that we purchased. I held each picture in my fingers, felt its kind and weight. I measured and described it, recording the medium, scenario, signature. The date. The provenance and exhibition historic previous. I bought right here to know the works very correctly.
All through this time I had begun to jot down about American art work. I was considerably throughout the modernists, these early-twentieth-century artists who’ve been part of the rising tide of abstraction. I wrote about utterly completely different members of this group—Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove. I wanted to jot down about O’Keeffe, nonetheless this was troublesome. She held the copyright to loads of her work, so it was important to ask permission from her with the intention to breed them. This was one trigger that comparatively little scholarship had appeared on her: How may you write a information about art work with out using images? Another reason was the confusion that permeated important response to her work until correctly into the sixties. All these flowers! Was she an essential artist or an reasonably priced sentimentalist? The work was very easy to like—may it is vital? She was scorned by the fellows, and, do you have to wished to be taken critically as a scholar, it appeared harmful to jot down about her.
Another reason for the paucity of writing about O’Keeffe was her private inaccessibility. She lived in a small village in rural New Mexico and sometimes gave interviews. Seclusion and withholding have been part of her persona. She was not interested by publicity, and it is talked about that she as quickly as refused a request for a one-person current on the Louvre. Proper right here was a paradox: the work, so intimate and interesting, even accessible, and the artist, so distant and self-controlled, clothed in excessive black and white. The thriller gave O’Keeffe a kind of charged glamour. A sighting was an enormous event.
That season, Sotheby’s had acquired an O’Keeffe painting of Canadian barns. It had been carried out throughout the early nineteen-thirties: two darkish gray buildings in a wintry panorama. I catalogued it, and requested Doris Bry—O’Keeffe’s private agent, who had as quickly as been the assistant to Alfred Stieglitz, O’Keeffe’s former husband—for information on it. Later she known as me.
“Mrs. Alger,” she talked about (for that was my title then), “that’s Doris Bry.” Actually I knew who it was. She had a dry, gravelly voice, very distinctive, with a Waspy drawl. “I’m calling regarding the painting of Canadian barns.”
“Certain, Miss Bry.” I used my formal, fluty, expert tone. “How may I present assist to?”
“I’d want to have the painting launched over to my residence.”
Doris Bry lived in an residence throughout the Pulitzer mansion. This was a grand Beaux-Arts setting up, only a few blocks away from our locations of labor on Madison Avenue. But it surely certainly didn’t matter how shut she was. “I’m so sorry, Miss Bry,” I discussed, “nonetheless our insurance coverage protection insurance coverage insurance policies don’t enable the works to depart the premises until they’ve legally modified fingers. For many who’d want to convey anyone in to see the painting, I’ll be glad to have it launched out to the viewing room and put up on the easel. Nonetheless I can’t allow the painting to depart our property.”
“Mrs. Alger,” Miss Bry talked about, “the artist is correct right here. She want to see the painting.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I discussed, in my common voice.
I known as storage to have the painting launched out. I had it under my arm and was strolling down the hall on my methodology to the doorway door as soon as I ran into my boss.
“What are you carrying?” he requested.
“Canadian barns,” I discussed, inserting a hand over the physique protectively.
“The place are you going?” he requested. “It might’t go away the premises.”
“The artist must see it,” I discussed.
My boss put out his hand. “I’ll take it.”
“I answered the phone,” I discussed. “I’m taking it.”
With the painting under my arm, I walked down Madison Avenue to the Pulitzer mansion. Doris Bry ushered me into her residence. She was a tall, stately girl, barely ponderous. She had darkish eyes, pale, lightless pores and pores and skin, and a mass of fast gray curls. She launched me into the lounge, the place there have been three completely different of us—two authorized professionals in darkish matches and an older girl. Bry launched me.
“That’s Mrs. Alger, from Sotheby’s.” The lady nodded pleasantly nonetheless talked about nothing. She was quite a bit smaller than I, which shocked me. She had a lined face, darkish, hooded eyes, and prolonged silvery hair coiled proper right into a low bun. She wore a gray cotton housedress with a white collar and a slender self-belt. On her toes, she wore flat black Chinese language language slippers, with straps all through the insteps.
Everyone watched as I carried the painting all through the room and set it on the easel. The small girl bought right here with me, nonetheless Bry and the authorized professionals stood behind the room, talking. Georgia O’Keeffe and I stood in entrance of the painting. She appeared quietly on the canvas, as if it have been part of her, as if she have been alone with it.
I stood silently beside her. Nonetheless that wasn’t ample. When of us meet anyone well-known, sometimes they want to inflect themselves upon the second, to impose their very personal identities upon that of the well-known explicit particular person. They’re saying, “I grew up in your metropolis,” or, “I’ve that exact same scarf,” or, “I met you as quickly as in a put together station.” It’s a hopeless enterprise.
“I hope you similar to the physique,” I discussed. I had ordered it myself. It was a simple silver half clamshell, the type that Arthur Dove had used. I knew O’Keeffe had most well-liked Dove and had admired his work. I knew she’d similar to the physique. She’d be grateful. This was my second.
She answered with out turning. “I like them most interesting with out frames.”
I discussed nothing further. She stood making an attempt on the painting, calm and utterly self-possessed. I really feel she was sporting a black sweater, a thin little cardigan, not buttoned up.
She’d have been in her early eighties then.
Nearly twenty years later, throughout the spring of 1986, I was dwelling in northern Westchester County. We had moved there ten years earlier, my family and I. We’ve been out throughout the nation, in an earlier farmhouse with a large barn and some fields. Dwelling with us have been four or 5 horses, two or three canine, and some big cats. My daughter was fourteen. I had left the art work world.
One evening, my husband, Tony, bought right here dwelling from city and situated me throughout the kitchen. He was in his enterprise swimsuit, nonetheless carrying his briefcase.
“I’ve one factor to tell you,” he talked about. On the put together coming out, he’d sat subsequent to a pal of ours, Edward Burlingame, who was the editor-in-chief and author at Harper & Row. Edward had talked about, “Georgia O’Keeffe has merely died, and there isn’t a large biography of her. Who do you assume we must always all the time ask to jot down it?”
Tony talked about me. Edward talked about that he knew I wrote fiction, nonetheless he wished anyone who knew about American art work. Tony knowledgeable him that I did. Edward talked about he’d maintain it in ideas.
When Tony accomplished the story, I shook my head. “Thanks for suggesting me, nonetheless he’s being nicely mannered. That’s Harper & Row, and it’s a large deal. They’ll need a museum curator, or anyway anyone with a graduate diploma. Not anyone who’s merely revealed numerous articles and catalogue essays. So he obtained’t ask me. And, if he did, I’d say no. I was writing about art work on account of my fiction wasn’t being revealed, nonetheless now it is. I’ve a novel coming out, and I’m carried out with art work. So, thanks for suggesting me, nonetheless, first, he obtained’t ask me, and, second, if he did I’d say no.”
Tony talked about, “Correctly, I wanted to tell you.”
“Thanks,” I discussed as soon as extra.
That was on Friday. On Monday, Edward known as and requested if I’d be interested by writing the biography of Georgia O’Keeffe, and I discussed positive.
That was the beginning. After many conversations, and a written proposal, Harper & Row equipped me a contract. Quite a few completely different writers had begun writing books about O’Keeffe, and timing was key. “Your information ought to be the first one to return again out,” Edward knowledgeable me, “or inside six months of the first, or it obtained’t be reviewed.”
And so I began the enterprise. I did loads of the archival evaluation on the Beinecke Library, at Yale, which holds the massive O’Keeffe-Stieglitz archive. There, I labored in tranquil silence contained in the alabaster partitions, leafing by the use of papers and footage; learning prolonged, chatty, private, essential, humorous, heartfelt, and thoughtful letters; learning a complicated neighborhood of kinship, friendships, {{and professional}} relationships. I cherished these situations enormously. The alternative kind of evaluation—interviews—was far more irritating, as a result of it meant meeting with strangers. There have been lawsuits under strategy, referring to O’Keeffe’s will and her inheritance, and feelings throughout the O’Keeffe neighborhood ran extreme. Some of us took sides, and as soon as they realized that I had spoken to anyone on the opposing aspect, they refused to speak to me. Completely different buddies and colleagues have been loyal to O’Keeffe’s prolonged customized of silence in direction of strangers and refused to speak to me.
Nonetheless her family, after they’d met me and browse completely different points I’d written, agreed to talk. I met diversified members, after which I was given the great honor of three days of interviews with O’Keeffe’s one remaining sister, Catherine O’Keeffe Klenert. Klenert was then in her nineties, frail and white-haired, nonetheless utterly cogent.
