Foursome

by Carolyn Burke

  Paul arranged for Beck to spend September with friends who took in boarders at Twin Lakes, Connecticut, where his family often stayed. While he worked on prints in the city, she could devote herself to watercolors; he would join her on weekends. At first, finding it too difficult to combine color and volume, she told Paul that she would not use her paints until she felt she was not wasting them. More ambitious for his success than for her own, she encouraged him to write in the morning and print in the afternoon. But what mattered most was their love: “You…seem to be in my hands, my feet, my breasts, stirring in my womb—and outside me too in everything that is beautiful.”

  Beck picked up her paints to try working en plein air, but she was again frustrated by her inability to translate the landscape into form. After noting “a hot red star” in the night sky (an evocation of O’Keeffe’s night star paintings?), she composed word pictures to show Paul that she, too, had the gift of “seeing.” But without a strong calling as an artist, she reverted to the role of helpmeet: “If only I could do more—give myself more and more to you—and your work.”

  Still, Paul’s insistence that she pose for hours each weekend felt like an added pressure. After a trip to a pine forest where she painted and he photographed, she told him that the place now spoke to her of him, and in almost the same breath, voiced her independence: “You seemed to want to identify me with a tree and I wasn’t feeling that.” Recalling his remark about her needing to relax, she chided, “It isn’t a matter of not being relaxed. It’s a matter of position.” Moreover, she was cross with him for photographing her when she was sleeping: “Do you think it’s nice to take ladies off their guard like that…?”

  Paul continued to fret about Beck’s inability to relax but did not see that his single-mindedness made it hard for her to let go. Unlike Stieglitz, he lacked the playfulness that put sitters at ease. Besides, Beck was unlikely to feel carefree in front of the camera with so much at stake, including their future as a couple. Yet despite her reservations, she longed for his return.

  To thank Stieglitz for inviting her to Lake George and explain her decision not to accept, Beck composed a letter on October 1. “I have not been unmindful of your generous hospitality,” she began: she had simply felt too “fagged” to make another journey. Since coming to Twin Lakes, she had gained some ease with “that very elusive medium,” watercolor, and spent each weekend with Paul. She added, “It’s fine to be together,” but she said no more about their relations except that they looked forward to seeing Alfred and Georgia in New York.

  “I had a very fine note from Beck,” Alfred told Paul some days later. “I hope the relationship is developing naturally & this to your mutual development.” He did not let Paul know of his reservations about his work, although at about this time he expressed his doubts to Seligmann: “I do hope that Strand finally finds some means of getting cash so he can get the full experience of the experiment—if it’s in him to get a full experience.” Seligmann replied that Strand’s prints were “all dressed up with technical mastery and no place to go.”

  At this point, Paul was unaware that his position as Alfred’s favorite was being called into doubt. He praised his mentor’s recent comments on the “Paintings by Modern French Masters” exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum as “more alive—more truly criticism than all the ‘literature’ of the professionals,” and said that he hoped for lively writing from Rosenfeld and Seligmann. Still, he was disturbed by what he called Rosenfeld’s “mystic streak, which tends to become somewhat saccharine”; the same was true, he thought, of Frank’s Our America.

  Strand was himself trying to write criticism that avoided the saccharine. His current piece, “Photography and the New God,” was to appear in Broom, a magazine of the arts recently founded by Alfred Kreymborg and Harold Loeb. Given that the country as a whole was obsessed with science, photographers were well placed to articulate this philosophy. “The deeper significance of a machine, the camera, has emerged here in America, the supreme altar of the new God,” he argued. But this deity had to be humanized “lest it in turn dehumanize us,” he wrote in an aside, before ending with a high-minded question about “the relation between science and expression…whose coming together might integrate a new religious impulse.”

  Shortly after taking possession of his modest nest egg, Paul and Beck were married at the Society for Ethical Culture on January 21, 1922. In a gesture of reassurance for their families, they chose as their officiant David S. Muzzey, an ECS leader and a Columbia professor; Beck’s sister Ray was her witness. Following their honeymoon in the Pocono Mountains, the Strands would take up residence in his family home and turn his room into an up-to-date photographic studio with minimal furniture and photofloods in lieu of lamps. That their sanctuary was a shrine to Paul’s ambitions did not seem odd to them, nor did the thought of starting marriage without a home of their own. For Beck, the move from her mother’s household to her husband’s provided the entry into the kind of life she had always longed for.

  CHAPTER 8

  Twentieth-Century Seeing

  1922

  Stieglitz embraced the young couple wholeheartedly. It seemed likely that their marriage would end any awkwardness between Paul and Georgia and establish the two couples’ relations on a new basis. Paul wrote from the Poconos that he wished Alfred and Georgia could join them there.

  On their return, the Strands began turning Paul’s room into a space for “20th century seeing.” Like a miniature 291, it displayed their art collection, including work by Dove, Marin, and O’Keeffe (a group of apples) in plain wooden frames. Georgia’s apples made a strong statement, Paul told Alfred; they were there “in the same sense that some photographs are there.” At that time, the couple also possessed one of Brancusi’s casts of Mlle. Pogany, the semiabstract head of a woman that had mystified viewers at the Armory Show. Paul’s photograph of the head suggests a portrait of a woman who knew how to stay still; Beck amused herself by covering the sculpture’s pate with her hat.

  While Beck could be irreverent about Paul’s icons, he remained in thrall to the Stieglitz ethos. That winter, he gave his support to Alfred’s latest plan, a magazine for the promotion of the American vernacular in art to be called Manuscripts, or MSS. Seligmann and Rosenfeld would serve as editors; O’Keeffe would design the logo; Strand would oversee an issue on the question “Can a photograph have the significance of art?” The first number set the tone: “MSS. is published by the authors of the writing which appears in it. Send them ten cents a copy if you like it, or Subscribe One Dollar for Ten Numbers to be issued in Ten Days—Ten Weeks—Ten Months—or Ten Years.”

  The magazine’s cheeky attitude accorded with Beck’s disinclination to follow the rules. She wrote to Alfred, offering her typing skills in the service of “something really alive,” unlike the treatises on medical disorders that occupied her during the day. Happy to use her free time in support of the group’s house organ, she took on what became a second job: transcribing essays for the MSS. photography issue, working as Paul’s coeditor, and critiquing the piece that he was writing for Broom. In time, she hoped, he could start his book on the aesthetics of photography.

  The newlyweds sought out like-minded friends, including the photographer Kurt Baasch and his wife, Isabel. Strand had met Baasch at the Camera Club, where he’d had a solo show in 1913. But unlike Strand, Baasch was not ambitious, preferring to take pictures on weekends at his house on Long Island. The Strands enjoyed trips there to visit the couple and their daughter, Olga, who loved to tease her shy “tio.” Paul relaxed with them: “He was warm with us, one of the warmest people I knew,” Olga Baasch recalled. Beck’s high spirits made a strong impression: “There was often a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She was the only woman I knew who smoked, even in the flapper era.”

  The marriage of Waldo Frank and Margaret Naumberg offered a different kind of model—theirs was a union of free spirits. They h
ad wed to satisfy the need for respectability, but they supported each other’s quest for self-expression. Margaret introduced Waldo to the ideas of Freud, which seemed to justify sexual freedom, and in his mind, his affairs: “We had wanted to live openly together because we loved each other….It was understood between us that we were not really married.” But reporting one’s infidelities to one’s spouse was not Beck’s way of being modern, nor did she feel at ease with Margaret, whose status as an educator reminded her of her own lack of direction.

  Beck was thrilled to be included when Alfred and Georgia invited the clan to their salon. Her acceptance by people whom Paul admired—Rosenfeld, Seligmann, and, above all, O’Keeffe—made her feel that they were kindred spirits. Still dressed in the stylish clothes paid for with her clothing allowance, Beck began modeling herself on Georgia, who ignored current fashion—shorter skirts, low waists, and bold colors—in favor of loose black dresses or tunics and long white smocks. But Georgia was slow to warm to the newcomer.

  In the meantime, Beck sympathized with Georgia’s consternation at the growing number of critiques explaining her work by virtue of her sex. Rosenfeld rhapsodized in The Dial: “Her great painful and ecstatic climaxes make us at last to know something the man has always wanted to know….The organs that differentiate the sex speak.” The normally sympathetic Hartley declared, “The pictures of O’Keeffe…are probably as living and shameless private documents as exist.” Reading Hartley’s essay, Georgia had been tempted to lose the manuscript to keep it from appearing in Hartley’s Adventures in the Arts—a book dedicated to Stieglitz, whose “Freudian” views were constantly replayed in their circle. Hutchins Hapgood told her not to mind: “They were only writing their own autobiography…it really wasn’t about me at all.”

  In May, Georgia went by herself to stay with friends in York Beach, Maine. She took long walks, watched the waves crashing on the rocks, and painted the sweeping landscape. She hoped that Alfred could understand her exhilaration: “I am getting to something of myself here that I couldn’t get when I was with you.” Still, the separation only enhanced their intimacy: “We seem to be one if we’re miles apart.” While she was glad to be getting back to herself, she missed him, especially in bed. (Her letters inform him of Fluffy’s alertness and her desire for the Little Man.) After describing the “green glass” of the sea, she confessed, “I am on my back—wanting to be spread wide apart—waiting for you to die with the sense of you—the pleasure of you—the sensousness of you touching the sensousness of me.”

  While Georgia recovered her joie de vivre, Beck delighted in her budding friendship with Alfred. She, Paul, and others in the group spent an enjoyable evening together after a concert; Beck made them laugh by describing Paul in his lavender pajamas. “It was all so humorous & very nice,” Alfred told Georgia. He appreciated Beck’s breezy manner as much as her secretarial skills. In July, she wrote to him at Lake George, saying that Paul would provide the “serious, critical, analytical bon mots” in his letters, and she would “be silly” in hers. Over the next few months Beck would play the role of flirtatious “kid” to Alfred’s “Old Man.”

  Before leaving New York, Alfred asked Beck to pose for him. One picture from this session was “astonishing,” he told Paul, “exactly the thing I was after.” In the first of Alfred’s many portraits of Beck, her hands clasp a gleaming black ball, suggesting a glimpse into the future. Beck was glad to learn that she had stayed still. “Good old Stieglitz,” she wrote, “to get me moveless the first shot out of your Eastman box. I have gurgled and crowed over poor Paul until I am sure he wishes neither of us had ever been born….Shoot along a proof to show him how superior we are as a working team.”

  Their exchanges became more complicitous over the summer. Beck asked if “St.,” Alfred’s habitual signature, meant “saint” and teased him about being a martyr. She continued: “I miss seeing your hundred thousand year old eyes looking across at us ‘kids’ and…loving us—Well, we all love you.” Alfred replied that “St.” meant “Stewed” and addressed her as “R.S.S.” He chortled at the thought of her hat on Mlle. Pogany’s head. “You are a thoroughly live wire,” he continued. Paul was fortunate “even if you occasionally have to bat each other into shape so as to bring about a more complete fit.”

  While Beck let Alfred know that she enjoyed a good fight, Paul restricted remarks about their life together except to note their happiness. She was “a great kid—fine and staunch,” he wrote after letting on that he, too, had photographed Beck’s hands. At the start of another three-cornered relationship, each read letters from the others out loud to their spouses as demonstrations of their trust.

  Only Georgia kept her distance. Hoping to help in Georgia’s efforts to regain the weight she had lost, Beck told Alfred to have her drink cocoa. She pictured Georgia slaving over the piece she was writing for the MSS. photography issue and her reactions when letters from Paul and herself were read aloud. Beck could not help seeing “Georginka” as the antidote to her own sister. While she was unsure how offers of friendship would be received, Alfred wrote that he was “more than well pleased” with her and Paul. He appreciated Beck’s devotion to MSS.: “You would have been a great asset at ‘291.’ ” Even more, he enjoyed her remarks on married life: “So you and Paul had a real tussle & he has made a photograph after it which you think is an addition. I don’t doubt he is growing. And naturally I’m curious to see what he has done.” (By then, she surely sensed that Alfred was more than a little jealous of Paul.)

  After printing his recent negatives Alfred told Paul that he would keep only a few—chief among them the print of Beck’s hands. He continued: “I have come very close to the Centre of the Bull’s Eye….It’s that darned Centre that is the only satisfying thing. It’s like the Centre of Woman that man tries in vain to reach.” Paul was more guarded about his problem with hitting the mark in portraits of her. By then, he was pursuing work in motion pictures, and through Beck’s connections, he found work as a freelance cinematographer with a company specializing in surgical films.

  To this end, Paul bought an ultramodern motion-picture camera on the installment plan—the gleaming Akeley that became one of his favorite subjects. That summer, he alternated between close-ups of the Akeley and of Beck’s face and hands, including some in which she held Mlle. Pogany. Sensing Alfred’s interest in their rapport, she said that Paul’s refusal to credit her with the staging of these pictures had resulted in another tussle. But she did not state the obvious: that her hands served each day to earn the wages on which they relied and at night to type submissions to MSS.

  At this time, the Strands tried out a device called an “Iron Virgin,” the head clamp that Paul asked Alfred to get for him to help Beck stay still. Alfred wrote, “Wait until Paul puts you into the Iron Virgin & says: ‘Smile—be natural.’—If Stieglitz made you do these things you’d look natural enough.” When Beck complained that the clamp was gouging holes under her ears, Alfred pictured Paul’s reaction: “He’ll be shouting to you soon: ‘For Heaven’s sake breathe….Sit still—don’t move—let there be life.’ ” The experiment was not a success.

  By the end of the summer, Beck was ready to leave town. Alfred welcomed the thought of her spending time at Lake George: “You poor lonely more than tired Soul—with Paul working so hard….I’d like you to have a great vue [sic]—A real healthy rest. —Out of doors. —We’ll do all to help you get it.” If she read between the lines, his signature hinted at fantasies about what might take place there: “Here’s to you & Paul—from us both—Your old St. (Sinner).”

  * * *

  . . .

  Alfred and Georgia met Beck at the station and took her to the Pines, a nearby guesthouse. Despite the full house at the Hill, they both looked more relaxed than in New York. Georgia had gained ten pounds; Alfred had recovered from his exhaustion. They were preoccupied by his mother’s health (she was attended by two nurses),
his estrangement from Kitty (he had not been invited to her wedding to Milton Stearns, a childhood friend), and his divorce proceedings. Still, they took Beck to tea with their guests and for rows on the lake, a favorite pastime.

  Despite their kindness, Beck felt unsure of her role there. She had brought painting supplies, but her palette, made of glass, had broken during the trip. While the one undamaged piece allowed her to make do, it was a bad omen. After seeing Georgia’s oils, a series of Lake George landscapes, Beck felt worse than inadequate. She had the finest paper, brushes, watercolors, and oils, she told Paul, “everything but ideas.” Moreover, despite its obvious beauty, the site did not enchant her. She doubted that she would stay for the month.

  Beck’s spirits lifted when Alfred repeated his praise of her as a model. His shot of her “paws” was a success; he looked forward to more sessions. She admired his new work, portraits of Donald Davidson, Claudia O’Keeffe (then an art student at Teachers College), and his niece Georgia Engelhard, known as “Georgia Minor,” as well as his photographs of barns, trees, and clouds; Beck urged Paul to add to his portfolio even though he was focusing on cinematography. “We must accomplish more this winter,” she wrote, and to that end, she sent him a check for his birthday to pay off the amount due on the Akeley. “The camera really belongs to both of us,” she added. “Everything we have is ours together.”

  Beck was elated by the critique of the recent Camera Club show in The New York Times, which applauded Paul’s “quiet challenge” to those who refused to see photography as art. Of his picture of a car engine, the critic wrote, “Mr. Strand, working with a machine, chooses a machine for his subject, and deliberately, intelligently, turns it into a work of art.” His approach to the subject received high praise: “The kind of tactile stimulus Picasso attempted to give by pasting bits of sandpaper and cloth on the surface of his canvases, Mr. Strand succeeds in giving more naturally.” The critic praised Nikolas Muray’s prints of dancing girls, which hung next to Strand’s “disciplined arrangements,” but found Muray’s dancers less striking than Strand’s well-ordered machines.