Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life

by Roxana Robinson Narrated by Bernadette Dunne

Overview

One of the greatest and most admired artists of the twentieth century, Georgia O'Keeffe led a life rich in intense relationships-with family, friends, and especially with fellow artist Alfred Stieglitz.

Her extraordinary accomplishments, such as the often eroticized flowers, bones, stones, skulls, and pelvises that she painted with such command, are all the more remarkable when seen in the context of the struggle she waged between the rigorous demands of love and work.

When Roxana Robinson's definitive biography of O'Keeffe was first published in 1989, it received rave reviews and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. This new edition features a new foreword by the author, setting O'Keefe in an artistic context over the last thirty years since the book was first published, as well as previously unpublished letters of the young O'Keeffe to her lover, Arthur MacMahon. This book also relates the story of Robinson's own encounter with the artist.

As interest in O'Keeffe continues to grow among museum-goers and scholars alike, this book remains indispensable for understanding her life and art.

Editorial Reviews

Hayden Herrera

...[D]oes much to give body to the O'Keeffe myth. The author presents a person who was both vulnerable and fiercepassionate and coolly withholdingsensuous yet oddly unsexual. —The New York Times Book Review1989

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This biography, the first to draw on sources unavailable during O'Keeffe's lifetime--and the first to be granted her family's cooperation--offers a persuasive feminist analysis of the life and work of an iconic figure in American art. Inspired by strong women in a Midwestern family that stressed a sturdy sense of self-reliance, O'Keeffe bucked oppressive social conventions to become one of the first female American artists to lead a professionally successful and emancipated life. But along the way lay struggle: O'Keeffe had to fight for emotional and artistic independence in her public and private lives, experiencing particular difficulties in her relationships with men, most notably her benefactor and husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. Novelist Robinson's ( Summer Light ) detailed, sensitive critique of O'Keeffe's work, tracing the development of the artist's esthetic, alternates with an absorbing, intimate narrative of O'Keeffe's personal life (including her notorious relationship with Juan Hamilton, six decades her junior, and the public battle over her estate) to provide a resourceful, imaginatively rendered portrait of a dauntingly difficult subject. Photos not seen by PW. BOMC alternate. (Oct.)

Library Journal

The painter Georgia O'Keeffe lived a long and complicated life, and her work has become a cultural icon, so demand for this title should be great. It is by no means a definitive biography, however. Novelist Robinson has clearly done her homework, but the uses to which she puts it are sometimes curious. After quoting a passage from O'Keeffe's correspondence, she cannot resist reiterating what she thinks the painter felt, even though O'Keeffe has just told us. Elsewhere, the description of an early romantic relationship of O'Keeffe's is vividly delineated, but we learn only in a footnote that the letters on which the description is based are only conjecturally from the man in question. While Robinson at times veers toward sentimentality in writing about the artist's life, she never does so about the work, and she treats the emotional complexity of O'Keeffe's marriage to Alfred Stieglitz and relationship with her companion Juan Hamilton with intelligence and care. Still, she wears the reader out (it takes 200 pages to get to Stieglitz's first showing of her work). This might have been a happier book as a novelization. --GraceAnne A. DeCandido, ``Library Journal''

Booknews

A big, impressive, and well crafted biography of a remarkable woman, artist, human. Robinson was able to gain the cooperation of the O'Keefe family. A fine job. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

New Yorker - Calvin Tomkins

The best book ever written on O’Keeffe. . . . An invaluable resource.

|Los Angeles Times

A profoundly human treatment of O’Keeffe and all the people who figured prominently in her life.

Hyperallergic

"thorough and immersive"

The Art Newspaper

"Robinson’s comprehensive biography gives a vivid account of O’Keeffe’s remarkable artistic career."

Art Newspaper

Robinson’s comprehensive biography gives a vivid account of O’Keeffe’s remarkable artistic career.”

Ms. Magazine

Chockablock with intriguing detail…It gives us the first sensible discussion of how photography influenced O’Keeffe’s painting—her closeups, wide angles, cropping, distortion of scale, and zooms.”

New Yorker

The best book ever written on O’Keeffe…An invaluable resource.”

Los Angeles Times

A profoundly human treatment of O’Keeffe and all the people who figured prominently in her life.

From the Publisher

Chockablock with intriguing detail, some apt insight, and best of all, O’Keeffe’s own voice – in her letters and in the words of her family and friends who wouldn’t talk to anyone before the artist’s death at the age of 98 in 1986. It gives us the first sensible discussion of how photography influenced O’Keeffe’s painting –her closeups, wide angles, cropping, distortion of scale, and zooms.”—Ms. Magazine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176587586
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	12/20/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos