From Publishers Weekly
In 1915 Georgia O'Keeffe was an oddly reckless 27-year-old college art teacher in South Carolina. By 1918 she was living and working with photographer Alfred Stieglitz, her future husband, who inspired her synthesis of painting and photography. Art historian Peters, who has taught at the University of Long Island, revealingly tracks the couple's fruitful collaboration by juxtaposing Stieglitz's lyrical photographs of Lake George, N.Y., with O'Keeffe's spiritual landscapes of the same terrain. One can also trace a progression in Stieglitz's photo-portraits of O'Keeffe, which become less obsessive and more objective. In 1929-1930, her trips to Taos, N.M., reacquainted her with Pueblo sand paintings, songs and dances which helped her tap a "primordial . . . therapeutic power" in her own art, according to Peters. Focusing on the period 1915-1930, this richly rewarding, stunningly illustrated study pinpoints influences, from art nouveau to Kandinsky, which O'Keeffe absorbed.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In this thoughtful and thought-provoking art historical study, Peters first traces strands of Art Nouveau and Symbolist theory in the art of Georgia O'Keeffe. She then discusses other influences, from Arthur Dow as teacher to Paul Strand as photographer and friend. But by far the most sustained study in the text is the relationship between O'Keeffe's painting and the photography and philosophy of her husband, Alfred Stieglitz. Peters argues lucidly and always in accessible language for O'Keeffe's emergence as a great and deeply individual artist while illuminating these many influences and illustrating her points with lavish use of excellent reproductions. This is the most intelligent book yet done on O'Keeffe. A worthy purchase for most collections.
- GraceAnne A. DeCandido, "School Library Journal"
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
