Becoming O'Keeffe: The Early Years

by Sarah Whitaker Peters

Book Overview

By examining the period 1915 to 1930, with flashbacks to O'Keeffe's little-known studies in Chicago and New York, Becoming O'Keeffe casts a clear new light on how a fiercely independent art student... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0896599078
• ISBN13: 9780896599079
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: Abbeville Pr
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 3.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.3" x 1.8" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

A Doorway into Early O'Keeffe

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.