Artist Couples: Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz

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Quinn: Hello and welcome to Pictorial on Relay FM. I'm Quinn Rose. I am someone who did not go to art school, but I did read a book about the topic we're talking about today, and if there's anything I'm good at, it's convincing myself I'm an expert when I read one book. So here we are. 

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Betty: Hi, I'm Betty. I am also someone who did not go to art school, but I have been working at an art gallery slash art museum for the last seven years, and we did have an exhibition on Georgia O'Keeffe. So I can also convince myself I now know everything about her, except probably only a little bit. 

Quinn: Of course we're kidding. But our topic today is on Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz and the relationship they had. Because we got a suggestion for a topic on Twitter, from @risamax to talk about artist couples. And so we decided to kind of break this down into a few different episodes. And in our first episode, we're talking about one of the most famous artists couples, at least in America. And that is the photographer Alfred Stieglitz and his wife, Georgia O'Keeffe, who both were spectacularly successful in their respective fields.

Betty: Yes, I'm, and actually it's interesting cause, when we had the exhibition a few years ago on Georgia O'Keeffe, the curator, I think it was, was talking about how for, for the longest time, Georgia O'Keeffe was known as Alfred Stieglitz's wife and, but we, it kind of today, a lot of us know Alfred Stieglitz as Georgia O'Keeffe's husband. And I definitely, I'm more familiar with her work than his work. Like really the—I think the most I really know about him is the photographs he took of her. Um, and you know, so it's interesting how like over time she's become, I think anyway more famous than he is.

Quinn: That's really interesting. Yeah. In his time, he was such a successful photographer. He was considered kind of the, the father of American photography in this tradition and was such an advocate for it. And I think that's partially because... I think that the a field of painting for Georgia O'Keeffe is focused on more, and sort of given more weight as a fine art than photography is. And so I think that's part of it, of why her legacy has perhaps outpaced him. 

Betty: Yeah. That, that's a good point. I mean, one other work of his that I do remember, he, he was famously the person who took a picture of Marcel Duchamp's The Fountain, or Fountain. And that's one of the things, one of the photographs that he is most well known for. So that's another thing I know about him other than Georgia O'Keeffe's portraits.

Quinn: Mhm, mhm. Well Stieglitz himself was born in 1864. And he had a very long, prolific photography career until he passed away in 1946, including making many galleries in New York where he presented his own photography as well as other people's photography and other artworks. And so he was very much a central figure, in especially the New York art scene, and kind of cultivating a lot of artists and kind of proteges who came up underneath him. 

Betty: Yeah. And  O'Keefe was actually one of the people that, that he came across or who actually showed up, I guess, in his life and in his gallery. So, O'Keeffe was, um, trying to do math here.. I think like 24 years younger than him? So O'Keeffe was born in 1887 and she actually, she studied at the, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. But she actually, I don't think she finished her studies there cause she was kind of a—she didn't really like the strictness and the traditional nature of her education. And so she actually, she ended up teaching art out West and she—she went to New York quite a quite a bit in like the 1910s. And she familiarized herself with the New York galleries and I believe she was aware of Alfred Stieglitz. And so she did keep in touch with some of her friends from art school. She had a classmate named Anita Pulitzer, and she actually in 1916 sent some of her work to Pulitzer, who was friends with Alfred Stieglitz, and then showed him her art. So he was actually quite impressed with her work and then asked to bring her to New York and to, you know, further investigate what she had to present. I do find it kind of nice that like, he was initially was impressed by her work. It wasn't like he met this pretty lady and just wanted to like, get with her—but I'm sure that too, but he was initially impressed with her art. 

Quinn: Yeah. That is one aspect of their relationship and a lot of the ways that both of these very intense artists move through the world that I find fascinating about them, is how much their relationship was wrapped up in their art from the very beginning, from the very beginning of Alfred first being attracted to Georgia because of her art. And how the onset of their physical relationship, which would follow in a few years was them being physically intimate with each other, but also him taking nude portraits of her and photographing her in the nude and how she was his muse as well as his eventual partner.

Betty: So, the exhibition that was in the art gallery of Ontario a few years ago was a show that was developed by the Tate Modern. And, uh, it was mostly a Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition, but in it, there was a photography section from Stieglitz as well as some photograph, I think by Paul Strand as well as some other photographers. And so there was a, a show—in a part of the, in the show there was, a section of Stieglitz's portraits of O'Keeffe, but I remember the curator was saying that Stieglitz was really interested in presenting O'Keeffe's work in his gallery because he became very fascinated with how distinctively American she was. Like her art was—it didn't seem to be like influenced by a European styles as like most American art at the time. A lot of American artists went to Europe to study, or there were at least influenced by European styles. But O'Keeffe, like, he just really felt like she had this very unique, like Americanist, or at least distinctive, style that wasn't—that he didn't see anywhere else. So I thought that was like a really interesting, that like, you know, he not only thought her art was good, like he just, he thought it was a very revolutionary at the time.  

Quinn: And so Alfred Stieglitz convinced Georgia O'Keeffe to move to New York, and to start a relationship with him, and devote herself into making this art, and presenting in these galleries in New York that offered Alfred Stieglitz also was all running, and she became very involved in the running of those galleries, and like very intertwined lives pretty much from that moment on. During this time, Stieglitz was also married to a different person, so... that's, that's gonna come back later, but at this time, so he was married to someone else. It was not a great marriage. He started an affair with Georgia O'Keeffe and his wife was like, what the heck? And he was like, okay, peace out. And left his wife for Georgia O'Keeffe, so... Obviously got very messy there. And the divorce proceedings, I believe actually took six years because there were so many legal holdups on, especially on his former wife's end, but pretty much from the point that O'Keeffe moved to New York she was living with Stieglitz and they were functionally married and partners from that moment on, despite the very messy beginning. But of course, you know, Stieglitz's first wife wasn't an artist, so he just couldn't have that, couldn't, couldn't be with anyone who wasn't his muse. I have thoughts about Stieglitz and his relationship with his muses. But, but yeah, and as you said, O'Keeffe was kind of one of his students, or proteges—not like, he wasn't like teaching these people art or anything, but he definitely was raising a lot of them up and she was part of that class. But kind of both by being his partner and by being such a spectacular artist, she really rose the ranks in terms of being one of the leaders of this art movement and not just one of his students.

Betty: Yeah. And actually, really on that topic of her being in New York... When I saw the show, it was actually my first time seeing her work from the 1920s, so she did a lot of paintings of cityscapes in New York. Like if you just kind of search Georgia O'Keeffe, New York or cities and buildings, you'll see some examples of that. And she, you know, she, she was really most well known for her flowers paintings. You know, and I think to an extent, her paintings in New Mexico are pretty well known. I mean, the... her probably most famous painting is the Jimson Weed slash White Flower that she painted in 1932. And this is—this painting, um, I believe is—still holds the record for being the most expensive painting ever sold by a female artist. Um, obviously as we discussed on the art and wealth episode, nowhere near the records for what male artists have sold. But anyway, it's still quite an achievement. Her paintings of New York and city scapes were really lesser well known. And for me personally, I didn't know about it at all. And I actually, I really, uh, I quite... I love them so much. Like for me, it's actually some of my favorite works that she's done. But so, but I think the issue was at the time painting cities and painting buildings and her works of the cityscapes were so like, dark and immense. I don't think they were taken very seriously cause it really was seen as a world of male artists, like people probably were like, "oh, of course. Like a lady will paint like, pretty flowers," but if you try to paint big tall buildings, then no thanks. So I, I think that might have something to do with why her cityscapes didn't become as well known.

Quinn: Yeah, I really like her cityscape paintings as well. And she also, I mean... of course, as a female artists in this time, slash any time, she had this problem of a double edge sword with this where her cityscapes were so striking and not as easily accepted as a woman. But on the other hand her most famous floral prints were all intensely sexualized. She had a lot of frustrations throughout her work of people over-sexualizing her work because of this and of saying that everything that she did was because of her representation as a woman and her female sexuality and all this stuff, when that wasn't necessarily what she was trying to represent all the time. Pairing this with the fact that Alfred Stieglitz had exhibitioned a lot of nude photographs of her... Not identifying her as the model in them actually, but I mean, everyone knew like they could, they were like, "yep, this is Georgia." So like sort of these dual aspects of  her presentation in the art world made things also difficult for her to be taken seriously on that end where everyone was like, "wow, she's such an amazing artist," but she's such an amazing "female artist" specifically. And she makes female specific work and wasn't compared on the same level to her male counterparts. 

Betty: Yeah, exactly. I think, honestly, like every time I bring up Georgia O'Keeffe with anybody, people's the first comment is, "oh, the lady that painted vaginas. And it's like, she actually didn't paint any vaginas. These are flowers, but of course they, people see them as vaginas. And so—and I think Georgia O'Keeffe herself, like she often spoke about it when people asked her and she said "no, like I wasn't, I wasn't thinking about vaginas at all." And so for example, like there's a painting of hers, it's actually called Music Pink and Blue Number Two. And of course people think it looks like a vulva. It's like a flower that's like really close up. It's got like blues, pinks, and reds and purples, and there's like a little... I guess, what looks like a oval opening, so people can think of that as like the vagina and there's like a little tip of the bulb at the top, people might think that looks like a clitoris. But as you can tell from the title of the painting, Music Pink and Blue, like her, a lot of her influences when she was painting these flowery paintings was actually in the music. Like, she apparently listened to different types of music when she painted them. And, uh, and I think like for her paintings, you really have to see them in person. Like I had only really ever seen two Georgia O'Keeffe paintings in person before I saw that big exhibition of hers. And then looking at like a picture of one of the flowers on a screen versus seeing one of those full-sized real life paintings of hers and actually all the true colors from the paints. Like it's really night and day. And when I saw the paintings in person, like for me anyway, I wasn't thinking like "vaginas." I was thinking about like this really interesting, like flow of melodies and like, it really looks like a visual representation of listening to some, you know, music piece. So, but anyway, she'll still be associated with flowery vulvas, I'm sure. 

Quinn: And on the other hand, if she was painting vulvas, that's okay. Like it's, yeah, you're allowed to paint vulva inspired flowers and not have that be what your entire artistic identity is reduced to. Because she did, she painted a ton of other stuff. She did a lot of skulls in her later years when she lived in New Mexico. Now this is just about Georgia O'Keeffe, I do want to back up—

Betty: Right! Sure, sorry .

Quinn: She's so interesting.

Betty: Yeah, I just really like her and to be quite honest, I'm not quite as interested in him, but yes, we should talk about him too.

Quinn: Yes. Um, but with that, I do want to talk about their dynamic as sort of what I alluded to earlier with his kind of obsession with muses and the mixing of art and physical relationships. They had problems in their marriage in their later year, sort of in this combination of Georgia didn't really want to get married in the first place. She really liked her independence. She didn't like the idea of being tied down to someone or someplace. And so she did struggle at some points with her marriage to Stieglitz, and how they kind of worked this out is she ended up spending a lot of time not in New York. She spent a lot of time in Maine. She discovered the West, and so she started spending a lot of time in New Mexico. Meanwhile, Alfred Stieglitz had, I would say, a problem not only with like sort of this really deep intense attachment to Georgia. Like he definitely really loved O'Keefe and they really loved each other. But he also just loved photographing women. He loved photographing women in the nude. He wanted two people to be his muse, and he, and he sometimes would have affairs with these people. Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz had a very close relationship with another artist couple, Paul Strand and Rebecca Salsbury. And this is the topic of the book that I alluded to earlier, it's called Foursome by Carolyn Burke, and it's a really interesting biography of the four of them as defined by their relationship as couples. Interestingly enough, Georgia O'Keeffe previously had a relationship with Paul Strand, when they were both just Alfred's proteges, before Alfred kind of won, I guess. And she ended up marrying him. Then when Paul Strand married Rebecca Salsbury, there was a period in which Stieglitz was photographing Salsbury a lot. And they potentially had a physical affair. He definitely had a very long term affair with a woman named Dorothy Norman. Who again was 22 when they met. Really did like women much younger than him. Okay. And part of that was she became super involved in his galleries and in the art world that he lived in, and she wanted to be his muse, and she wanted to be this person that he was photographing. It sort of, it became a spiral in their marriage where Georgia wanted more independence and started spending more time away. Meanwhile, Alfred was starting to sleep with this other woman, which didn't make Georgia wants to be around more. So this was a division that led through a very long period of time through their marriage. And Georgia knew about it. At some—I don't, I don't think we know the exact time in which she figured it out, but she wasn't dumb. She knew that this was happening, and I think that part of it being so wrapped up in the art is like, it's almost this double whammy of... it's them trying to figure out that their dynamic as people who are married to each other and are like, attracted slash sleeping with other people, and also their relationship as artists and people who are inspiring each other, and now he's getting his inspiration from another woman.

Betty: Yeah. Part of the reason that Georgia O'Keeffe went out to New Mexico, I think is partially also because she personally didn't really like New York as a place to live either. Like she, I guess didn't really like the city and was more of like an out in the wilderness type of person. Yeah. So I think like, you know, this time away from each other, also possibly contributed to them drifting apart. I mean, it is, like you mentioned earlier when Georgia O'Keeffe and, Alfred—when their relationship started, it involved him cheating on his wife. And so it isn't really that much of a surprise when it happened to their marriage. But interestingly, they did stay married all the way until his death. He obviously continued to sleep with Dorothy Norman. But, yeah, but she, she did kind of remain as his mistress for the rest of his life. 

Quinn: And they, they were such complicated people because at the end of his life, Georgia rushed to his bedside to be with him and to, to be with him in his last days and to take care of his legacy, and to make sure all of his affairs were order, and did stick by him as his wife until the very end. And by all accounts, he also truly, deeply loved her until the very end, but they did have these divisions between them.

Betty: For sure. And apparently when, I think it was in 1946 when he suffered a stroke and had to go into a coma, when O'Keeffe returned and she apparently walked into his hospital room, but you know, saw Dorothy Norman there, and of course was like... Oh my God, get out. [both laugh] So, I think it remained kind of complicated even until the end. But, you know, that's kind of how their relationship was.

Quinn: Yeah. I don't really like romanticizing men who cheat on their wives just because he and his wife also had, like, a beautiful artistic relationship. So I do have beef with Alfred Stieglitz, um, as I have beef with many people who are dead, fictional, lots of things, don't care about me [laughs]. But I think that it's just interesting to talk about them in this sort of like three-dimensional, involved relationship that was not as simple as I always thought it was. Like, I mean, I always heard—basically what I knew about them before reading this book was they were this couple, they were both very successful. He was 20 years older than her, and she super outlived him. And I was like, okay, seems a little sketch, but okay. And the reason we are able to know so much about them now is because they had a very involved post correspondence. They wrote to each other constantly when they were apart, which was for large swaths of their relationship which we talked about, as well as everyone around them was all writing letters to each other, every day, all the time. And so we were able to get this much more vibrant picture of their relationship than you would with a lot of other couples throughout history, for example. And so I think that they kind of are almost this kind of, almost prototypical kind of tragic artists couple where like, they loved each other so much and their art was so passionate and they were muses for each other, and mentors for each other. But also he cheated on her and she maybe cheated on him and we're not sure, and she went West. And like, it's all very easy to romanticize, but at the same time, it's like, these were just people who were very talented artists, but they also hurt each other a lot. And that's just life. 

Betty: I, yeah—I'm actually wondering if I'm in the book that you read, if there is specific mentions about, maybe confirmations about like, oh, Georgia's extra marital affairs? Because I read that she might have at least had like two affairs with women. And then maybe with like some other people as well. And then obviously like after Stieglitz is passed away, apparently like later when she was—I think in her eighties, she had a, like, a assistant who was 27 years old, who she probably had a relationship with. So I guess maybe when she got older, she became the reverse of Stieglitz as well. So I'm wondering like, yeah, if in your book and, or in your research you've like, seen any exact confirmation of these supposedly affairs slash relationships?

Quinn: Yeah. So there was some discussion of that. Specifically I thought there was a really interesting piece that Carolyn Burke wrote about Georgia O'Keeffe/s potential relationship with Rebecca Salsbury. That was the other half of the couple that I mentioned earlier, she was married to Paul Strand. And there was a period of time where Georgia and Rebecca, she went by Beck, so Georgia and Beck, like went out West for six months together and they were like, "we're in love now." Basically. They had had a rocky relationship their whole life, but they became super, super close over this time and just wrote back to their husbands about how amazing the other woman was and all this stuff. And Burke came to the conclusion that they didn't actually have a physical affair. She thinks that based on the evidence, like of how devoted they both were to their husbands and how basically heterosexual, their sexual desires seem to be that they didn't have an affair. It seems to me that based on that there's no confirmation one way or the other. I think that being super into your husband and/or being mostly straight don't necessarily preclude that they might have also had an affair. Especially based on Alfred Stieglitz, like loved Georgia O'Keeffe, but also was like getting it on all over the place with other people. So I think that's one of the things that we're never going to know for sure. Some historians believe they definitely did, some historians believe they definitely didn't. So it's much more ambiguous than some of Stieglitz's affairs were that were more well-documented. And in terms of—yeah, she like left most of her stuff and her money and everything to her assistant in the end of her life and her family was like "what the hell?" And it's like real life Knives Out. Um, yeah. And I think that's another thing where it's kind of unconfirmed whether or not they actually were having—they actually had a relationship, physical relationship, or if she just really... loved her assistant and he treated her well. It's their thing that there just isn't the same kind of firm documentation on. Yeah. 

Betty: I mean, she was in her, she was in her eighties, and I guess eventually nineties, like she died when she was 98. So I mean, you know, of course older people could also get it on, but you know, it could also be possible that she was just like... "I'm just going to look at him." So, um, yeah, who knows? But it is interesting how like, as sexualized as she was as a person and an artist that there isn't as much of a, uh, information on her partners and her relationships. Uh, but, I mean, the other thing was like, she was, she did also kind of brand herself as this very reclusive person, especially after she moved out to New Mexico. Like she was, she dressed all in black. She did all—she'll have like a really good and interesting, uh, fashion sense. But yeah, like she... portrayed herself as a very, like, you know, reclusive individual, and very seemingly very quiet. But according to her—friends of hers who actually like did go out and visit her in New Mexico, they were like, "no, like, in reality, she was like, funny and jokey and really like, you know, sarcastic and outgoing." But she, she, her like artistic public brand, was, was something quite different. 

Quinn: I like how this episode is mostly about Georgia O'Keeffe, and like also, she was married to Alfred Stieglitz.

Betty: Yeah you know, he just happens to be some guy that cheated on her, but. Whatever. 

Quinn: I obviously also think that she's a super interesting person and I would love to talk about her for hours. But also the fact remains is that she probably wouldn't have been as successful without Stieglitz. She did her work and she was amazing. I'm just saying in terms of that he introduced her to the art world and he did display her as an artist all the time. And he did—he like, made whole exhibitions based around her work. Which by the way, were extremely financially successful and kind of funded both of them. There definitely was a give and take in their relationship. And this had the side effect of her not being taken as seriously as quickly in certain circles and things like that. Notably like she did keep her maiden name her whole life. She wanted to be an O'Keeffe. She wanted to be her own person, both personally and professionally. So I think that's, uh, even that alone is very telling of sort of the dynamic that they had. But as much as Stieglitz definitely did some messed up stuff in their marriage. Like, I also see the way that they did really matter to each other, and they did influence each other's lives and professional careers so deeply that we could never extricate them.

Betty: So like in kind of looking at also the photographs that Alfred took of Georgia. Like they are, they are quite amazing photographs. And of course I'm, she's actually—I actually think like she's more well known for her hands than her, her face or her boobies. So like there, there were lots of, he took lots of photos of her hands. And there's a really famous photo of her where she—like it's also her hands, like she's kind of semi grabbing her face in the portrait. And then even in—there's another photo of her where she is I guess in like a bathrobe or something and she's just has her hair down. But even then, she's got her two hands, clasped right in front of her breasts. And it's like her hand—like even in a photo of her face, uh, her hands are predominantly featured. And then I'm also looking at another one where she's like, she looks like she's tying up her hair. And again, you see her hands. So I'm thinking maybe, uh, Alfred Stieglitz had a hand fetish. It's like a foot fetish, but instead it's a hand fetish instead. And then there's like a really well known photo of her hands over, like a, like a skull. And so, again, like you mentioned, she was really famous and well known for paintings of skulls, of like rams and bulls and goats and stuff. And so that photograph of her, I think actually really represents her quite well. And then—and kind of the other thing is at the gallery like we have, we actually have a guide who does a tour about portraits. And I'm like, traditionally, when I think of a portrait, of course I think of like someone's face. But in his tour, he actually shows a lot of different types of portraits. And in a way, I think these portraits of O'Keeffe, like that one with her hands over the skull is more representational of her than even like a picture of her face. So yeah, like I think of a portrait as O'Keeffe, as like her hands instead of her head.

Quinn: I mean, her hands are what she built her whole life on. They were works of art in these photos, and they were things that created some of the greatest works of art that we've seen. We could definitely talk about these two for hours. But we're going to wrap up for now. 

Betty: I could probably just talk about O'Keeffe for hours, but anyway, I'll end it there [laughs].

Quinn: Oh, of course. There are so many other amazing artists couples out there, and we're definitely going to cover a bunch of more across different art traditions in different areas of the world as we go on. But thank you so much for listening to this episode of Pictorial. Our show notes are at relay.fm/pictorial, where'll you'll find links to everything we talked about and a form where you can submit topics suggestions if you have another couple you think we should cover, or any other art related topic. You can follow us on Twitter or Instagram @PictorialPod, where we'll post images of stuff that we talked about. And you can also follow me on Twitter or Instagram @aspiringrobotfm.

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Betty: And we actually also have a YouTube channel, Pictorial Podcast, where we upload the video version of these podcasts where we are actually inserting images of what we talked about right on the screen. So you can feel free to follow us on there as well. And I am @articulationsV on Twitter and Instagram, and I'm also at Articulations on YouTube. 

Quinn: Thanks for listening, art enthusiasts!

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