I recently read _Portrait of an Artist, A Biography of Georgia O'Keefe_, by Laurie Lisle. The book was a fascinating yet exhausting read. It involved a lot of highlighting and googling. (When I read about something/someone visual I have to keep google image nearby.) I am still processing some of what I read, deciding whether or not I agree with it, adding ideas to my own, considering how the book will change my own life.
One of the greatest things about reading this book, to me, was that it followed the US art scene over the years of Georgia's life from its fledgling days of 1887 through the lively 1986. My own great grandfather (who is to blame for my love of Harry & David) lived from 1887 to 1986. I knew that he had seen a lot in his lifetime---from indoor plumbing, to radio and TV, to jet airplanes---but I'd never been able to so complete
ly consider what was happening in the art world over his lifetime.
I recommend this book to anyone who needs an ounce of backbone, of determination to do something they've always wanted to accomplish. It will challenge or confirm the carefully ordered life. Here are a few of my favorite lines from it:
What has been said about Georgia:"She often seemed to recoil instinctively from others and never needed anyone to entertain her. 'I've never been bored,' she once stated flatly when she was elderly."
"Jessie Flint, one of Georgia's playmates who spent many nights with her in the tower room, remembered that [Georgia] was so content with her family life that she had no desire at all to visit Jessie in the village."
"Her colors were always the brightest, her palette the cleanest, her brushes the best---although to accomplish this she would do without much else," Anita Pollitzer said.
"She said that she rejected the use of realism for its own sake ('If one could only reproduce nature, and always with less beauty than the original, why paint at all?' she asked rhetorically) as well as the idea of mimicking the styles of others ('Rather than spend my life on imitations, I would not paint at all,' she said)."
"She wasn't ready to break artistic conventions herself, but an idea had taken root in her mind as she groped for self-expression. In time she would realize that an artist didn't always have to obey the rules and that, indeed, rules often had to be broken."
"[Georgia] toyed with the idea of getting work in New York, but realized that her energy would be absorbed by earning money in the expensive city and, perhaps, also by people."
"[Stieglitz'] motivating idea---that through the fulfillment of the individual artist the truth would emerge---was appealing to her."
"Her ability to form a protective cocoon around herself was critical, because if she had cared about public opinion or if her delicate creative process had become too self-conscious, it would have been destroyed. She knew she must keep painting and portray her vision whether or not her contemporaries understood it."
"Stieglitz defended pricing the works of living Americans on a par with European masters by arguing that high prices were the only thing that made materialistic Americans respect art."
"So much at one with herself, she was as comfortable in the company of an Indian as in that of a wealthy socialite, and as at home at an Indian rite as she would have been in Carnegie Hall."
"When asked why she traveled so much, she would reply that she wanted to see if she lived in the right place."
"She learned to respect the weeks or months it took for an idea to germinate, waiting in quiet expectation as the painting crystallized in her mind's eye. 'I know what I'm going to do before I begin, and if there's nothing in my head, I do nothing.'"
"She also learned not to talk about what she might paint for fear of losing her impetus."
"In the catalog she expressed the wish that everyone who saw the works of art would realized that there were many ways to see and to think, and, as a result, that each person would feel more confident in his or her own way."
"Sounding just like Stieglitz, Georgia heatedly told a reporter in 1945 that few Americans were interested in art: 'What our civilization is interested in is how much they can make out of it and how fast they can make it go.'"
"It was a common reaction for [Georgia] to be felled by exhaustion, a midwinter virus, perhaps anxiety over a show's reception, and, certainly, distaste for meeting her public."
"'There is no limitation of Europe in her,' is the way the sculptor Brancusi later put it. 'It is a force---a liberating free force.'"
"'[Georgia] is absolutely clean-cut like a crystal,' [Stieglitz] liked to say. 'They're the pure artists---I don't believe they ever put down a stroke with the idea of the public.'"
"...her individualistic painting style often made untried artists more acutely aware of how art is created through the prism of personality and helped them understand their own inner-directed artistic processes."
What Georgia said herself:"'I don't like publicity. It embarises [sic] me...but as most people buy pictures more through their ears than their eyes---one must be written about and talked about or the people who buy through their ears will think your work no good...and won't buy---and one must sell to live."
"'I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality,' she later remarked. 'I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say---in paint.'"
"I know I am unreasonable about people, but there are so many wonderful people who I
can't take the time to know."
"'I had gotten a lot of new ideas and was crazy to get off in a corner and try them out.'"
"'This thing that is our own is so close to you, often you never realize it's there,' [Georgia] later explained. 'I visualize things very clearly. I could think of a whole string of things I'd like to put down but I'd never thought of doing it because I'd never seen anything like it.'"
"'I don't see why we ever think of what others think of what we do---no matter who they are---isn't it enough just to express yourself?'"
"'I always have a curious sort of feeling about some of my things---I hate to show them---I am perfectly inconsistent about it---I am afraid people won't understand---and I hope they won't---and am afraid they will. Then too they will probably be all mussed up.'"
"---and the worst of it is that you must cheapen art to appeal to any mass, and your mass artists will inevitably become bad artists."
"I grew up pretty much as everybody else grows up and one day seven years ago found myself saying to myself---I can't live where I want to---I can't go where I want to---I can't do what I want to---I can't even say what I want to---. School and things that painters have taught me even keep me from painting as I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to and say what I wanted to when I painted as that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn't concern anybody but myself---that was nobody's business but my own."
"I still like the way I see things best."
