ROXANA ROBINSON is an art historian and novelist. Among her books of fiction are Sparta, Cost, A Perfect Stranger and Other Stories, Sweetwater, This Is My Daughter, Asking for Love and Other Stories, and Summer Light.
Chockablock with intriguing detail, some apt insight, and best of all, O Keeffe s own voice in her letters and in the words of her family and friends who wouldn t talk to anyone before the artist s death at the age of 98 in 1986. It gives us the first sensible discussion of how photography influenced O Keeffe s painting her closeups, wide angles, cropping, distortion of scale, and zooms. Ms. Magazine"
Chockablock with intriguing detail, some apt insight, and best of all, O Keeffe s own voice in her letters and in the words of her family and friends who wouldn t talk to anyone before the artist s death at the age of 98 in 1986. It gives us the first sensible discussion of how photography influenced O Keeffe s painting her closeups, wide angles, cropping, distortion of scale, and zooms. Ms. Magazine"
The painter Georgia O'Keeffe lived a long and complicated life, and her work has become a cultural icon, so demand for this title should be great. It is by no means a definitive biography, however. Novelist Robinson has clearly done her homework, but the uses to which she puts it are sometimes curious. After quoting a passage from O'Keeffe's correspondence, she cannot resist reiterating what she thinks the painter felt, even though O'Keeffe has just told us. Elsewhere, the description of an early romantic relationship of O'Keeffe's is vividly delineated, but we learn only in a footnote that the letters on which the description is based are only conjecturally from the man in question. While Robinson at times veers toward sentimentality in writing about the artist's life, she never does so about the work, and she treats the emotional complexity of O'Keeffe's marriage to Alfred Stieglitz and relationship with her companion Juan Hamilton with intelligence and care. Still, she wears the reader out (it takes 200 pages to get to Stieglitz's first showing of her work). This might have been a happier book as a novelization. --GraceAnne A. DeCandido, ``Library Journal''
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