How Georgia Became O'Keeffe

September 12, 2011
Choosing to examine and extract lessons from famed artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s personal life rather than dissect her oeuvre, the author of The Gospel According to Coco Chanel ponders what it is about O’Keeffe that speaks to us so deeply and what went on inside the artist to allow her to defy society’s conventions and be so “resolutely herself” in the service of an abiding passion.” Growing up on a Wisconsin farm and left to her own devices by a withholding mother gave O’Keeffe the freedom to create her own vision. In her 20s, measles derailed an early career in commercial art, and a short stint teaching art in a remote Texas public school turned her on to the beauty of extreme landscape and how isolation could spark inspiration. O’Keeffe’s marriage to the much older legendary photographer Alfred Stieglitz was bumpy; he was overbearing and unfaithful, but he believed in her vision and genius. This intimate, quirky, and sassy essay makes its iconic subject into an accessible, relevant figure with whom readers, particularly women, can identify. But Karbo’s constant wisecracking and self-referencing grow tiresome, and her adoration of O’Keeffe lacks intellectually rigorous discussion of the art itself. Illus.