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| The Two Artist Couples Who Helped Start American Modernism | The Two Artist Couples Who Helped Start American Modernism |
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| FOURSOME Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paul Strand, Rebecca Salsbury By Carolyn Burke | FOURSOME Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paul Strand, Rebecca Salsbury By Carolyn Burke |
| “Foursome” is a group portrait of three formidable 20th-century American artists — the photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, the painter Georgia O’Keeffe and the photographer Paul Strand — plus one rambunctious cowgirl in search of an identity, Rebecca Salsbury. As they couple and uncouple in this fascinating, well-told history by Carolyn Burke, who has also written biographies of Mina Loy, Lee Miller and Edith Piaf, it becomes clear that the electric center of this group isn’t Stieglitz, the impresario, as one might guess, but O’Keeffe, the loner. | “Foursome” is a group portrait of three formidable 20th-century American artists — the photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz, the painter Georgia O’Keeffe and the photographer Paul Strand — plus one rambunctious cowgirl in search of an identity, Rebecca Salsbury. As they couple and uncouple in this fascinating, well-told history by Carolyn Burke, who has also written biographies of Mina Loy, Lee Miller and Edith Piaf, it becomes clear that the electric center of this group isn’t Stieglitz, the impresario, as one might guess, but O’Keeffe, the loner. |
| The early chapters are all about Stieglitz, who was a generation older than the others. Born in 1864 to German Jewish parents who soon moved the family from Hoboken, N.J., to Manhattan, Stieglitz was called “Little Hamlet,” because of his brooding. Goethe was a favorite author. During a family sojourn in Germany in the 1880s, Alfred got a camera and learned photography. He returned to New York with a love of bohemian culture and an antipathy toward Kodak and what it stood for — the idea that photography is a simple hobby anyone can pick up. His mission became to put the medium on an equal plane with painting. His financial backing came from the family of his wife, Emmy Obermeyer, a brewer’s daughter, with whom he had a loveless marriage. | The early chapters are all about Stieglitz, who was a generation older than the others. Born in 1864 to German Jewish parents who soon moved the family from Hoboken, N.J., to Manhattan, Stieglitz was called “Little Hamlet,” because of his brooding. Goethe was a favorite author. During a family sojourn in Germany in the 1880s, Alfred got a camera and learned photography. He returned to New York with a love of bohemian culture and an antipathy toward Kodak and what it stood for — the idea that photography is a simple hobby anyone can pick up. His mission became to put the medium on an equal plane with painting. His financial backing came from the family of his wife, Emmy Obermeyer, a brewer’s daughter, with whom he had a loveless marriage. |
| Stieglitz’s great pictures of New York, heavy with symbolism — “The Terminal,” “The Hand of Man,” “The City of Ambition” — marked him as an important photographer, but his gallery made him a cultural force. He opened it at 291 Fifth Avenue in 1905, eight years before the Armory Show that’s usually cited as the introduction of modern art to the United States. The aim of Stieglitz’s gallery, known simply as 291, was to import art by the likes of Cézanne, Picasso and Matisse and to establish a homegrown modernism by showing and nurturing painters (Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Max Weber, Arthur Dove and O’Keeffe) and serious photographers (including David Octavius Hill, Edward Steichen and Gertrude Käsebier). | Stieglitz’s great pictures of New York, heavy with symbolism — “The Terminal,” “The Hand of Man,” “The City of Ambition” — marked him as an important photographer, but his gallery made him a cultural force. He opened it at 291 Fifth Avenue in 1905, eight years before the Armory Show that’s usually cited as the introduction of modern art to the United States. The aim of Stieglitz’s gallery, known simply as 291, was to import art by the likes of Cézanne, Picasso and Matisse and to establish a homegrown modernism by showing and nurturing painters (Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Max Weber, Arthur Dove and O’Keeffe) and serious photographers (including David Octavius Hill, Edward Steichen and Gertrude Käsebier). |
| The first of the foursome to meet Stieglitz was Strand, who was also raised in New York by German Jewish parents. The maker of such great photos as “Blind Woman” and “Wall Street,” Strand comes across in Burke’s account (which is based largely on recently available correspondence among the foursome) as a humorless, hapless, heavy-handed zero. As a student visiting 291, he quickly fell under Stieglitz’s spell. At first the feeling was mutual. Stieglitz saw in Strand a possible son. Although he criticized Strand’s early photographs, describing one as an “agreeable blur” in which “grass looks like water,” he gave Strand a show in 1916. But Stieglitz’s praise of Strand grew fainter until he was eventually left to fend for himself. | The first of the foursome to meet Stieglitz was Strand, who was also raised in New York by German Jewish parents. The maker of such great photos as “Blind Woman” and “Wall Street,” Strand comes across in Burke’s account (which is based largely on recently available correspondence among the foursome) as a humorless, hapless, heavy-handed zero. As a student visiting 291, he quickly fell under Stieglitz’s spell. At first the feeling was mutual. Stieglitz saw in Strand a possible son. Although he criticized Strand’s early photographs, describing one as an “agreeable blur” in which “grass looks like water,” he gave Strand a show in 1916. But Stieglitz’s praise of Strand grew fainter until he was eventually left to fend for himself. |
| Why the cooling? As Strand matured he embraced a social and documentary role for photography that was at odds with Stieglitz’s modernist aims. (This rift reflected a general split among artists that widened during the Depression.) But something else about the young Strand bugged the not-so-young Stieglitz. And this something, Burke suggests, was virility; Stieglitz knew it was Strand who initially caught O’Keeffe’s fancy. | Why the cooling? As Strand matured he embraced a social and documentary role for photography that was at odds with Stieglitz’s modernist aims. (This rift reflected a general split among artists that widened during the Depression.) But something else about the young Strand bugged the not-so-young Stieglitz. And this something, Burke suggests, was virility; Stieglitz knew it was Strand who initially caught O’Keeffe’s fancy. |
| A farm girl from Wisconsin born in 1887, O’Keeffe first visited 291 in 1908 to see its newest sensation, or “howler” — a show of Rodin’s nude drawings. She derided them as scribbles, but the arguments she overheard about them drew her in: “There wasn’t any place in New York where anything like this was shown.” Although she kept coming back, she didn’t meet Stieglitz until years later. A friend of hers had sent him some of the abstract charcoals that O’Keeffe termed her “Specials.” Stieglitz was bowled over. He hung them — without her permission — calling them “the purest, finest, sincerest things,” and declaring them emblems of “Woman unafraid.” O’Keeffe, unafraid indeed, stormed in, saying he had no right to hang them. He replied: “You have no more right to withhold those pictures … than to withdraw a child from the world.” Soon he was taking photographs of her with her work. So started one of the most charged relationships of modern art. | A farm girl from Wisconsin born in 1887, O’Keeffe first visited 291 in 1908 to see its newest sensation, or “howler” — a show of Rodin’s nude drawings. She derided them as scribbles, but the arguments she overheard about them drew her in: “There wasn’t any place in New York where anything like this was shown.” Although she kept coming back, she didn’t meet Stieglitz until years later. A friend of hers had sent him some of the abstract charcoals that O’Keeffe termed her “Specials.” Stieglitz was bowled over. He hung them — without her permission — calling them “the purest, finest, sincerest things,” and declaring them emblems of “Woman unafraid.” O’Keeffe, unafraid indeed, stormed in, saying he had no right to hang them. He replied: “You have no more right to withhold those pictures … than to withdraw a child from the world.” Soon he was taking photographs of her with her work. So started one of the most charged relationships of modern art. |
| Eventually, the letters and photos got quite steamy and so did the correspondence between O’Keeffe and Stieglitz (in which O’Keeffe is strikingly funny and forward). But first came O’Keeffe’s crush on Strand. As Burke reports: “Georgia was thunderstruck when he showed her his new prints. A charged look passed between them.” Strand moved to Texas, where O’Keeffe was teaching. And if it hadn’t been for his fear that Stieglitz would be hurt if he made a move, and O’Keeffe’s irritation with Strand’s worship of Stieglitz and his general dependence — she called him “the most helpless, slow, unseeing creature I ever saw” — the course of art history might have been different. | |
| Once O’Keeffe was done with Strand, she returned east, and she and Stieglitz set about creating the mind-blowing, multipart art object that would bind the foursome together for years: a series of photographs of O’Keeffe known as “Portrait.” Stieglitz photographed her clothed and nude, in parts and whole, standing before her paintings and on his radiators. Contrary to popular belief, Burke notes, Stieglitz and O’Keeffe didn’t immediately fall into bed. After Stieglitz’s wife caught them during a (chaste) photo session, they moved into the same house, but their sleeping arrangement was like the last scene of “It Happened One Night”: A blanket hung between them. | Once O’Keeffe was done with Strand, she returned east, and she and Stieglitz set about creating the mind-blowing, multipart art object that would bind the foursome together for years: a series of photographs of O’Keeffe known as “Portrait.” Stieglitz photographed her clothed and nude, in parts and whole, standing before her paintings and on his radiators. Contrary to popular belief, Burke notes, Stieglitz and O’Keeffe didn’t immediately fall into bed. After Stieglitz’s wife caught them during a (chaste) photo session, they moved into the same house, but their sleeping arrangement was like the last scene of “It Happened One Night”: A blanket hung between them. |
| A month later, though, the blanket was lifted. (“It’s a wonder I didn’t give you a child,” Stieglitz boasted.) He was Man. She was Woman. His sex organ had a name (Little Man) and so did hers (Miss Fluffy). Sex was “fluffing.” | A month later, though, the blanket was lifted. (“It’s a wonder I didn’t give you a child,” Stieglitz boasted.) He was Man. She was Woman. His sex organ had a name (Little Man) and so did hers (Miss Fluffy). Sex was “fluffing.” |
| The public wasn’t privy to their romance, but when gallery goers saw prints from the “Portrait” series on display at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association in 1919, some felt that they were. From that point on, the public’s view of O’Keeffe’s paintings, which Stieglitz often showed in his gallery, would be inflected by what viewers saw of her body, much to her dismay. Critics embarked on a mad quest for metaphors, drenched in innuendo, to describe her paintings — a flower unfolding, plastic form penetrated by the scientific spirit, the essence of woman opening herself. | The public wasn’t privy to their romance, but when gallery goers saw prints from the “Portrait” series on display at the Young Women’s Hebrew Association in 1919, some felt that they were. From that point on, the public’s view of O’Keeffe’s paintings, which Stieglitz often showed in his gallery, would be inflected by what viewers saw of her body, much to her dismay. Critics embarked on a mad quest for metaphors, drenched in innuendo, to describe her paintings — a flower unfolding, plastic form penetrated by the scientific spirit, the essence of woman opening herself. |
| What did this have to do with Strand and Salsbury? By 1922, Strand was married to the beautiful, buxom, boisterous Rebecca — “Beck” — a daughter of Rachel Samuels, a Jewish opera singer, and Nate Salsbury, Buffalo Bill Cody’s partner in the Wild West show. Still hankering for Stieglitz’s approval, Strand wanted to emulate Stieglitz’s fine romance with O’Keeffe, “Portrait” and all. And Beck did too. But Beck wasn’t able to stay still for the camera and Strand couldn’t make her. This ate away at them both. At one point Strand put her in a head clamp. To no avail. To make matters worse, Stieglitz made a number of portraits of Beck — one showing her bare breasts floating like lily pads, another water droplets beading on her beaming face — that blew her husband’s portraits out of the water. Stieglitz, ever competitive, ever anxious about his manliness (he compared an imperfect picture to “an incomplete erection”), bragged that he’d made Beck, like O’Keeffe, one of his “Immovables.” | What did this have to do with Strand and Salsbury? By 1922, Strand was married to the beautiful, buxom, boisterous Rebecca — “Beck” — a daughter of Rachel Samuels, a Jewish opera singer, and Nate Salsbury, Buffalo Bill Cody’s partner in the Wild West show. Still hankering for Stieglitz’s approval, Strand wanted to emulate Stieglitz’s fine romance with O’Keeffe, “Portrait” and all. And Beck did too. But Beck wasn’t able to stay still for the camera and Strand couldn’t make her. This ate away at them both. At one point Strand put her in a head clamp. To no avail. To make matters worse, Stieglitz made a number of portraits of Beck — one showing her bare breasts floating like lily pads, another water droplets beading on her beaming face — that blew her husband’s portraits out of the water. Stieglitz, ever competitive, ever anxious about his manliness (he compared an imperfect picture to “an incomplete erection”), bragged that he’d made Beck, like O’Keeffe, one of his “Immovables.” |
| However, Beck was no immovable object. She was restless. She thought she might become a writer. Or artist. Or typist. Or muse. Or mother. From the moment she met Stieglitz she was scrambling for her station. And at last she found it. She wanted to be O’Keeffe. She copied O’Keeffe’s unconventional dress — loose black dresses and tunics — and even added a twist of her own, trousers, until O’Keeffe told her to stop. She married a photographer from the 291 circle, like O’Keeffe, even though she and her husband never seemed to click. She tried to paint nude, like O’Keeffe. She painted flowers. | However, Beck was no immovable object. She was restless. She thought she might become a writer. Or artist. Or typist. Or muse. Or mother. From the moment she met Stieglitz she was scrambling for her station. And at last she found it. She wanted to be O’Keeffe. She copied O’Keeffe’s unconventional dress — loose black dresses and tunics — and even added a twist of her own, trousers, until O’Keeffe told her to stop. She married a photographer from the 291 circle, like O’Keeffe, even though she and her husband never seemed to click. She tried to paint nude, like O’Keeffe. She painted flowers. |
| Although Paul failed at being Alfred and Beck failed at being Georgia (so Burke implies), Strand eventually found his way as a photographer and filmmaker in Mexico and Italy, and Salsbury found her way as a hard-drinking artist in Taos, doing reverse paintings on glass. In the end, though, Beck did forge the final link among the foursome — with O’Keeffe. She and O’Keeffe traveled together to New Mexico, and they had the time of their lives. Salsbury divorced Strand and married a Westerner named William James. And O’Keeffe, who’d grudgingly married Stieglitz, only to find him a cheat, at last found her home alone in the desert. | Although Paul failed at being Alfred and Beck failed at being Georgia (so Burke implies), Strand eventually found his way as a photographer and filmmaker in Mexico and Italy, and Salsbury found her way as a hard-drinking artist in Taos, doing reverse paintings on glass. In the end, though, Beck did forge the final link among the foursome — with O’Keeffe. She and O’Keeffe traveled together to New Mexico, and they had the time of their lives. Salsbury divorced Strand and married a Westerner named William James. And O’Keeffe, who’d grudgingly married Stieglitz, only to find him a cheat, at last found her home alone in the desert. |
| The sad thing about this foursome is that only two really thrived in it — Stieglitz and O’Keeffe. The other two remained shadows. In a threesome, one person is always left out. In a foursome, I suppose, two are. | The sad thing about this foursome is that only two really thrived in it — Stieglitz and O’Keeffe. The other two remained shadows. In a threesome, one person is always left out. In a foursome, I suppose, two are. |
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