Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe

In this book Laurie Lisle has produced one of best biographies of an artist to be found in the wide bibliography of modern art, and a classic among biographies in general. It is more thoroughly researched, more informative, more engaging to read, and better able to sound the depths of the mystery of Georgia O’Keeffe than are later biographies of this quintessential American artist. As a first biography of the artist as well as Lisle’s own first book, Portrait of an Artist offers us the experience of the liveliness of Lisle’s discovery of O’Keeffe and of her own literary coming-of-age at once. The elixir here is courage. Without intruding herself upon the reader, one has a sense that the young author is linked to her subject through the fearless capacity for self-realization that O’Keeffe’s story offers us. The best scholarship leaves us with traces of the author’s own growth, and herein we sense that this writer is empowered and ennobled by successfully undertaking this daunting authorial project with resolution and humility.Beginning with O’Keeffe’s girlhood on her father’s farm in Sun Prairie Wisconsin, the biography follows O’Keeffe through the expanse of her life of 99 years, which spans the entire history of modernism. Just as engagingly, Lisle leads us across the wide spaces of the American landscape as we are introduced to Charlottesville Virginia, where O’Keeffe’s father moves when she is an adolescent, and then on to New York City, with forays to the Texas Panhandle and Lake George, and finally to her move to the New Mexico desert which O’Keeffe’s whole being seemed to mirror and offer back to the earth.Central to the story of O’Keeffe is her art. O’Keeffe’s painting and her life are as interwoven as her art is with the landscape. Determined to be an artist from the time she was a teenager, O’Keeffe’s story is one of devotion to her talent to express her vision of the world around her. Uncompromising in her aesthetic needs, from her austerity of dress to the furnishings of her dwellings, she sacrificed convention, often at some expense, to engage and distill the beauty of the world around her and offer this beauty up to others in her painting. The conventional aspect of O’Keeffe’s life, her marriage to the photographer, gallerist, and critic Alfred Stieglitz, 23 years her senior, was characteristically unconventional. Otherwise, much of her story reads like the life of an American saint or a medieval anchorite. Reclusive, ascetic, devoted to her calling, self-disciplined, and a stranger to compromise, she survived bouts with usually-fatal diseases, and domestic difficulties with Stieglitz. Stieglitz, to his enduring credit, was unwavering in his support of her as an artist, and with her placed this above all else. Stieglitz had been a vocal proponent for a truly American art, independent of the influence of the schools of Europe, and in O’Keeffe this dream was realized.The shape of this dream is an oeuvre whose splendor and originality the art world even now hasn’t fully come to terms with, and the art-loving public yet has an appetite for exhibitions and retrospectives of O’Keeffe’s work still taking place thirty-four years after her death.As a record of O’Keeffe’s life, and as a window into the mystery of the profound potential latent in our humanity when it is released by the siren call of art, O’Keeffe’s story, like her art, illuminates all of us. The great unfolding flower of her life tells us about the romance of finding our own way, and of the importance of attending to the ground beneath our feet and the forms around us to orient ourselves in the quest to live truthfully. As an art librarian I would say there are few books more essential for a collection that seeks to tell the full story of modern art than Portrait of an Artist. The book is also a supremely entertaining read. And as an exemplar, especially for young people looking for models for a way of living honestly, and especially for young women, this book will be a godsend. There is no better self-help book than a good biography.Thomas Hill,Art LibrarianVassar College

The life of this strong woman of humble beginnings kept my attention. She was born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin; I, Oshkosh. She spent time in Virginia where I hovered around in the seminary and the army. She was inspired by Amarillo and the sights of the Texas panhandle where my nature loving best friend grew up. She was in New Mexico when this friend and I went to the San Ildefonso Pueblo to see pottery by Marie. I’ve walked and enjoyed much of the same landscapes as she and appreciate how she absorbed it and painted it. I enjoyed it. She breathed it in and painted it out.

I'm teaching a class on O'Keffee. Great Resource.

Our reading group all picked a different biography and we discussed our choices at our last meeting. Portrait of An Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe was my pick. This was an interesting and easy read that often revealed O'Keeffe's multi- faceted personality and artistic nature and work. I found the black and white photos of O'Keeffe, many of which were taken by her mentor and husband Stieglitz, often as revealing as Laurie Lisle's words. The bio reveals the artist from birth in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, in 1887 to her death in Taos, New Mexico in 1986.It's not a perfect portrait as the author seems to impose her own opinions/guesses on why the artist reacted or thought certain things. But it was a good overview of her career and life. O'Keeffe valued privacy and freedom in her life. She was an accepted and successful artist at a time when many felt only men could be accomplished artists. Lisle's biography hightlights the fact that O'Keeffe wasn't a perfect person but that what mattered to her most was her art. I wish some of O'Keeffe's paintings had been included in the bio since the artist herself said that her life wasn't the important thing. It was her art that mattered.

This seems to be about as in-depth and detailed account of O'Keeffe's life as you could want. The most interesting parts of the book for me were her student years and her early years in New York as an artist. You get a sense of the struggle it took her to find her unique painting voice. And at the same time it's interesting to see the reception of the art world at a time when a "woman artist" was not taken seriously. She lived a long and (very) active life and this book takes you everwhere in her 90+ years. It would be nice to have an updated version of this book with small color reproductions of the artworks mentioned as you're reading so you don't have to pause and look them up on the internet. Very enjoyable and now I hope I can visit the O'Keeffe museum to see examples of her paintings in person.

I've read a few G O'K bios. I've loved them all, but something about this one really appealed to me. The matter of factness, perhaps. But I got a better sense of her position in the art world, as well as the American culture in that period. Especially her reaction to the WWI. I recently saw a BBC documentary on Picasso that was admiring him because there were no artists of the period like him. I had to forget everything I knew about Georgia I learned from this book to be able to enjoy the program at all. I am a painter and getting a sense of how she managed her personal life with her professional one was incredibly insightful and helped me accept the distance I need from others sometimes. One thing she says, to paraphrase, there are a lot of nice people I don't have the time to get to know. YES! I hope you enjoy reading about this genius as much as I did.

Bought this to read before trip to Santa Fe since it was the most comprehensive biography I could find. The print is a bit dark but some of my friends liked that when I was sharing info. It would have been ideal to have had an iPad to look up the paintings named in the book as I read but I was still very happy with this book. It is a really good overview of the entire life of an amazing woman, her art & times. Would have enjoyed the book even if I didn't have a purpose in reading it. Good research and a fascinating read. Highly recommend it.

I discovered Georgia O'keeffe when I was growing up in San Francisco and was drawn to her vibrant colors and soft flowery, feminine forms. I had no real idea who she was, or anything about her remarkable story until I read her biography in Portrait of An Artist.This is a wonderful glimpse of the very early New York art scene and a fascinating vision of "Out West", New Mexico in the 30's 40's and 50's when Georgia O'keeffe first visited then moved out there. The descriptions are so beautiful, all I can think about is getting out there to see for myself.The greatest part of this book is the detailed description of the life, habits and thought patterns of this pioneering and spirited woman - she was a bona-fide trailblazer for future generations of women artists and successful women in general.My Swedish great grandmother emigrated to the US from Sweden when she 16 years old, all by herself with her little brother, and I recognized that same brave and gorgeous spirit in Georgia O'keeffe. I love stories of fiercely independent women doing their thing no matter what anyone else thinks or says.I came away from this read fully grasping, once and for all, that abstract art, is by no means avant-garde, or radical ! A lot of people still react to abstract art as if it were way "out there" in the left field of daring experimentation. And yet It goes way, way back. Georgia O'keeffe was one of the greatest and earliest of it's advocates starting in 1918!The book isn't brilliantly written, okay, it's even a little flat, but the story, is so exceptional, it more than makes up for the writing.

Great book. Arrived in good time in great condition

This used book is in excellent condition. The biography is like reading a textbook; yet personal anecdotes by Georgia keep it intriguing.

die autorin ist sehr vertraut mit dem leben von georgia o`keeffe und schreibt lebendig, informativ und detailreich. konnte sie persönlich bei einem vortrag erleben.

J'ai trouvé que finalement, la biographie de Georgia O'Keefe était racontée de façon plate et peu passionnante.