Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and Setting Priorities | Brain Pickings

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Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and SettingPrioritiesby Maria Popova

“Anyone with any degree of mental toughness ought to beable to exist without the things they like most for a fewmonths at least.”

In her heyday, Georgia O’Keeffe (November 15,1887–March 6, 1986) was written about asAmerica’s first great female artist. The great socialcritic Lewis Mumford once remarked of a paintingof hers: “Not only is it a piece of consummatecraftsmanship, but it likewise possesses thatmysterious force, that hold upon the hidden soulwhich distinguishes important communicationsfrom the casual reports of the eye.” In 1946,O’Keeffe became the first woman honored with aretrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.Exactly thirty years earlier, her career had beencatapulted by the lovingly surreptitious support ofher best friend, Anita Pollitzer, who had assumedthe role of agent-manager and secretly sent someof O’Keeffe’s charcoal drawings to the famous 291 gallery owned by the influentialphotographer and art-world tastemaker Alfred Stieglitz — the man with whomO’Keeffe would later fall in love. Upon first seeing her work, Stieglitz exclaimed thatit was “the purest, finest, sincerest things that have entered 291 in a long time.”

The lifetime of letters between the two women, full of O’Keeffe’s spiritedexpressiveness and peppered with her delightfully defiant disregard for punctuation, iscollected in Lovingly, Georgia: The Complete Correspondence of Georgia O’Keeffeand Anita Pollitzer (public library) — a revealing look at the inner life of one of thepast century’s greatest artists, brimming with her unfiltered views on art, work ethic,love, and life. It is also the record of a remarkable and somewhat tragic friendship,which suffered a profound rift when Pollitzer’s warmhearted and generous biographyof O’Keeffe was met with indignant disapproval by the artist. (“You have written yourdream picture of me — and that is what it is,” she wrote to her friend in rejecting thebiography. “It is a very sentimental way you like to imagine me — and I am not thatway at all.”) Even so, for more than thirty years the two women held up mirrors forone another in a most Aristotelian way, using the reflective veneer of their surface

Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and Setting Priorities | Brain Pickings

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amount:

labors of love

differences — Anita with her wholehearted emotionality and faith in the bountifulnessof the universe, Georgia with her fierce self-protection and fear of emotionalvulnerability, regulated by a formidable work ethic — so that each could reveal hertrue nature and, in the process, shed light on the other.

Georgia O'Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz, 1918

Pollitzer’s most vitalizing effect on O’Keeffe was the ability, through the sheer forceof her own vibrant aliveness, to pull out of her friend a rejoicing in the full act ofliving, the kind of “spiritual electricity” essential to great art. O’Keeffe knew andvalued this — early on in the friendship, she wrote to Pollitzer: “You are certainly agreat little girl — I love the way you just bubble with life — and the enthusiasm ofliving,” and later, “I haven’t found anyone yet who likes to live like we do.” But sheexpresses this most exquisitely in a letter from August of 1915. At 27, Georgia —already a formidable presence at that age, typically dressed in tailored suits andimmaculate white shirtwaists, with hair pulled back in a disciplined bun — writes to

Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and Setting Priorities | Brain Pickings

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Anita:

Your letters are certainly like drinks of fine cold spring water on a hot day —They have a spark of the kind of fire in them that makes life worthwhile. —That nervous energy that makes people like you and I want to go aftereverything in the world — bump our heads on all the hard walls and scratchour hands on all the briars — but it makes living great — doesn’t it — I’m glad Iwant everything in the world — good and bad — bitter and sweet — I want itall and a lot of it too —

Such realness of living was essential for O’Keeffe’s values not only as a person, butalso as an artist. Later in the same letter, condemning another artist’s affectation, shewrites:

I believe an artist is the last person in the world who can afford to be affected.

Embedded in young O’Keeffe’s worldview was a certain quality of grit, the charactertrait we now know is the greatest predictor of success. In a letter from September ofthat year, she makes her determination unequivocal:

I believe in having everything and doing everything you want — if you reallywant to — and if you can in any possible way… We just want to live dont we.

But O’Keeffe balanced this voracious appetite for freedom and unburdened living witha keen awareness of the practicalities of life and the quintessential tussle of thecreative life — the struggle to integrate making art with making a living. She writes toPollitzer:

You see — I have to make a living

I don’t know that I will ever be able to do it just expressing myself as I want to— so it seems to me that the best course is the one that leaves my mindfreest … to work as I please and at the same time makes me some money.

If I went to New York I would be lucky if I could make a living — and doing itwould take all my time and energy — there would be nothing left that would bejust myself for fun — it would be all myself for money — and I loath — If I can’twork by myself for a year — with no stimulus other than what I can get frombooks — distant friends and from my own fun in living — I’m not worth much…

But a few days later, O’Keeffe reaches a depth of despondency that testifies to AnaïsNin’s memorable point about great art being the product of emotional excess. Writing

Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and Setting Priorities | Brain Pickings

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to Anita, she despairs over the psychic drain of apathy:

One can’t work with nothing to express. I never felt such a vacancy in my life —Everything is so mediocre — I don’t dislike it — I don’t like it — It is existing —not living — and absolutely — I just wish some one would take hold of me andshake me out of my wits — I feel that insanity might be a luxury. All the peopleI’ve meet are all right to exist with — and it is awful when you are in the habit ofliving.

And yet O’Keeffe’s ambivalence about emotional intensity is clear — without it, shefeels vacant; with it, she feels out of control. In a letter from October of 1915, shelovingly but sternly scolds Pollitzer for what she sees as emotional excess:

You mustn’t get so excited… You wear out the most precious things you haveby letting your emotions and feelings run riot at such a rate… Dont you thinkwe need to conserve our energies — emotions and feelings for what we aregoing to make the big things in our lives instead of letting so much run awayon the little things everyday

Self-control is a wonderful thing — I think we must even keep ourselves fromfeeling to much — often — if we are going to keep sane and see with a clearunprejudiced vision —

I do not want to preach to you — I like you like you are — but I would like tothink you had a string on yourself and that you were not wearing yourself allout feeling and living now — save a little so you can live always —

Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and Setting Priorities | Brain Pickings

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'Blue and Green Music' by Georgia O'Keeffe, 1921

Echoing Sherwood Anderson’s spectacular letter of advice on art and life to histeenage son — “The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain allof their lives in a stupor. The point of being an artist is that you may live.” —O’Keeffe adds:

It always seems to me that so few people live — they just seem to exist and Idon’t see any reason why we shouldn’t live always — til we die physically —why do it in our teens and twenties…

For her part, Pollitzer echoes Seneca’s memorable wisdom on living wide vs. livinglong and responds: “I’d lots rather live hard than long.” But for O’Keeffe, the task ofliving hard is to be attained no matter the circumstances — in a prescient letter fromthe same month, fourteen years before O’Keeffe would move to the remote Southwestto live a solitary life, she writes:

I believe one can have as many rare experiences at the tail end of the earth as

Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and Setting Priorities | Brain Pickings

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in civilization if one grabs at them — no — it isn’t a case of grabbing — it is —just that they are here — you can’t help getting them.

In many ways, O’Keeffe implicitly offers the art of living as the answer she poses toPollitzer about the nature of art itself:

What is Art any way?

When I think of how hopelessly unable I am to answer that question I can nothelp feeling like a farce… Ill lose what little self respect I have — unless I can insome way solve the problem a little — give myself some little answer to it.

A year later, O’Keeffe would revisit the question with a remark that falls between thesincere and the sardonic:

I don’t know what Art is but I know some things it isn’t when I see them.

Georgia O'Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz, 1918

And yet O’Keeffe learns the invaluable art of embracing the unknown and writes toPollitzer a few days later:

This feeling of not knowing anything and being pretty sure that you never will is— well — I might say awful — if it wasn’t for a part of my make up that isalways very much amused at what out to be my greatest calamities — that

Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and Setting Priorities | Brain Pickings

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part of me sits in the grand stand and laughs and claps and screams — inderision and amusement and drives the rest of me on in my blunderingfloundering game — Oh — it’s a great sport

A month later, O’Keeffe revisits the notion of wholehearted living and touches on thepresently trendy concept of “work-life balance” — a rather toxic divide, I believe —writing to Pollitzer:

Haven’t worked either since Monday and here it is Saturday afternoon — Ivejust been living. It seems rediculous that any one should get as much fun out ofjust living — as I — poor fool — do — … Next week Im going to work like atiger.

[...]

I wonder if I am a lunatic… Imagination certainly is an entertaining thing to have— and it is great to be a fool.

Though O’Keeffe was known for her unflinching work ethic — an artist who,dissatisfied with the quality of commercially available canvases, began stretching herown — she never abandoned this exuberant joy in the art of living. A few days later,in November of 1915, she writes:

I just cant imagine anyone being any more pleased and still being able to live.

But O’Keeffe’s greatest feat was in bridging her discipline with her dedication towholehearted living. In December of 1915, a period when she was particularly shorton money, she writes to Pollitzer:

Anyone with any degree of mental toughness ought to be able to exist withoutthe things they like most for a few months at least.

Still … I sometimes think its almost a sin to refuse to satisfy yourself.

Even so, O’Keeffe isn’t free from the self-conscious guilt we tend to experience whenwe feel unproductive. A few weeks later, still unhappily stationed at her teachingposition in South Carolina, she captures this moral struggle in rather strong language:

Its disgusting to be feeling so fine — so much like reaching to all creation —and to be sitting around spending so much time on nothing —

I am disgusted with myself —

I was made to work hard — and Im not working half hard enough — Nobodyelse here has energy like I have — no one else can keep up

Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and Setting Priorities | Brain Pickings

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When able to bridge her love of life and her love of work, however, O’Keeffe capturesthe exultant joy of creative flow and self-expression beautifully:

Ive been working like mad all day … it seems I never had such a good time —I was just trying to say what I wanted to say — and it is so much fun to saywhat you want to — I worked till my head all felt light in the top — then stoppedand looked… — I really doubt the soundness of the mentality of a person whocan work so hard.

'Red Hill and White Shell' by Georgia O'Keeffe, 1938

O’Keeffe would go on to create for herself the kind of life and environment best suitedfor such delirious and dogged application of her talent and work ethic. Like anothergreat artist, Agnes Martin, who memorably asserted that “the best things in life happento you when you’re alone,” O’Keeffe mastered the art of solitude by deliberatelyavoiding social distractions to make art always her priority. In a Saturday Reviewprofile piece Pollitzer wrote of her friend in 1950, she quoted O’Keeffe as saying:

I know I am unreasonable about people but there are so many wonderfulpeople whom I can’t take the time to know.

Georgia O’Keeffe on Art, Life, and Setting Priorities | Brain Pickings

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In a 1958 letter to Pollitzer, O’Keeffe, by that point in her early seventies, speaks toher priorities directly:

Most of the time I am alone with my dog and think it is fine to be alone — Ihave been working and rather like my doings — I really work like a day laborer— have been preparing canvas and it is really hard work but Im determined toprepare enough to last four or five years so there will always be lots of emptyones around. Im even going to frame them and back them so there will benothing left to do but the paintings… My life is good — and I like it. The dogand I have a walk almost every early morning and again at sunset — He justnow banged on the door to tell me he was ready to come in and go to bed.

But perhaps the single most piercing sentiment, the one most vividly expressive ofO’Keeffe’s lifelong priorities, comes from her notes on the very artifact that causedthe demise of her friendship with Pollitzer — the biography O’Keeffe deemed whollyunrepresentative of her spirit. One of her many corrections on the manuscript reads:

I do not like the idea of happyness — it is too momentary — I would say that Iwas always busy and interested in something — interest has more meaning tome than the idea of happyness.

What an exquisite way to capture the idea that happiness is found in being intenselypresent with one’s experience.

Complement Lovingly, Georgia with O’Keeffe’s passionate love letters to AlfredStieglitz.

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