Foursome

by Carolyn Burke

  One wonders what Beck thought of Georgia’s new work and Rivera’s ideas about native culture as a source for art. A few weeks after her fortieth birthday, one of those moments that may spur one to action, she took the train to New Mexico by herself. Alfred wrote her a few weeks later, “I hope Taos is giving you your heart’s desire….If I could bring you a bit of Peace—don’t you think I would? But it seems beyond my powers to bring anyone any peace—maybe because I’m too often eagerly looking for a bit myself.”

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  . . .

  Beck was already in Taos when Alfred’s retrospective, comprised of photographs from the last forty years, opened on February 15, 1932. With Dorothy’s help, he grouped his work in series—the Equivalents, studies of New York, and portraits. His cloud pictures, Edwin Jewell wrote, were “visualizations, as Mr. Stieglitz phrases it, of his philosophy of life”; his recent views of Manhattan were cool and rational, especially when compared to his earlier cityscapes. While many saw the recent prints as more objective, their allusions to the transformation of New York over time implied another aspect of his “philosophy,” that of an Olympian observer pondering the nature of change.

  The exhibition also included a set of portraits that composed a miniretrospective within the larger show. Images of Georgia, identified both by name and as “Torso,” illustrated shifts in feeling between the couple over the years; two from 1923 entitled Nude in the Lake—most likely Beck—offered a different vision of the feminine. Three portraits of O’Keeffe stood out in the group of Stieglitz stalwarts, including Rosenfeld, Frank, Hartley, and Anderson (but not Strand). What struck members of the group was the addition to their number of Dorothy Norman: The prominence of her portraits reflected her sway over Alfred’s imagination. “If speculations about Alfred and his new, much-younger-than-Georgia model did not reach the press,” a family member recalled, “they were carried in thundering whispers by those who crowded the gallery.”

  Georgia informed Brett, “The place is the most beautiful now that it has been—The rooms as a whole are more severe—more clear in feeling—and each print as you walk down the length of each wall and look closely…it is as though a breath is caught.” But the next sentence reveals the strain beneath her apparent serenity: “I am glad he is showing them but there is something about it all that makes me very sad.”

  In this state of mind, Georgia also told Brett, who was disheartened by Alfred’s lack of interest in her work, not to worry about the Strands’ show that spring. While Beck may have boasted to friends in Taos, her paintings would be shown on sufferance now that Dorothy had the upper hand. (In Dorothy’s view, Beck was common, and Paul slavish in his devotion to Alfred.) Georgia told Brett drily, “Showing or not showing any ones work doesn’t make it any better or worse—so let it go at that.”

  When not at work on her oils, Beck presumably took more moonlight rides, drank “mucho” whiskey, and spent evenings pondering her heart’s desire. In a 1932 photo of her with Bill James, they are a couple dressed for a fiesta: her long white lace dress, elbow-length gloves, and dark shawl set off the black sash, headband, and hat of his Spanish colonial costume. In another, they stand side by side in complementary riding outfits. By then, Beck was hitting her stride in her chosen medium. She returned to New York with some twenty southwestern scenes—paintings of the Mexican devotional images called santos, women in black crossing the empty mesa, the Ranchos de Taos church, flowers, cactus, and sagebrush.

  Bill James and Rebecca Strand, Taos, 1932 tintype

  In her account of this time, Beck implied that her acquaintance with Bill began in 1930, when the economic crisis reduced the number of Indian Detours groups coming to Taos and left him “saddled with a large stock of bad accounts and good Indian wares.” Her allusion to the sign on his door—“gone to Mike’s”—hints that they frequented this establishment, where bootleg booze flowed freely. She said little about herself but stressed Bill’s resourcefulness: He brewed his own beer and imported Scotch whiskey, in violation of the laws in force under Prohibition. She did not mention that he was separated from his wife, who lived in Denver, or that he was almost nine years younger than she was.

  Beck’s pride in Bill’s western background is also apparent in her account of his earlier life in Denver. He told her about his sister, Edna, who had restored the derelict Central City Opera House, and of his efforts on her behalf—which included scouring Denver for props and playing the part of a croupier when Edna, who married into one of Denver’s wealthiest families, the Chappells, staged a production of Dumas’s Camille with Lillian Gish. It pleased Beck that the Jameses not only came from “hardy pioneer ancestors” but cared about the arts. What was more, Edna’s in-laws had recently given their twenty-two-room mansion to the Denver Art Association, where one could see the work of Matisse and Picasso as well as that of artists from Taos and Santa Fe.

  It was with mixed emotions that Beck went back to New York in time for her show with Paul and to see how things stood between them. Alfred had made it clear that the Strands would have to do everything themselves; there would be no advance publicity, no catalog, no help with the decor. Brought closer in their dismay at his attitude, Beck and Paul hung their work to feature his photographs. Elizabeth McCausland praised their “unflinching integrity,” especially the images from the Southwest that showed “the whole wreck and ruin of a frontier civilization.” The New Yorker was less enthusiastic: “One of the early pupils of Master Stieglitz, [Strand] has old-fashioned notions about a camera.” Beck’s medium was “more or less a lost art,” the critic continued. Then, praising her “modest endeavors,” he paid her a compliment: “Now and then one of them achieves a high point of beauty.” McCausland allowed that this medium made possible “a suave sense of finish in the completed painting” with no obvious limitations when practiced by “an honest and sincere artist like Rebecca Strand.”

  Still, it was hard for the Strands to take much satisfaction in their notices, given the way they had been treated. Realizing that Alfred disapproved of his “pupil’s” turn to social engagement, Paul went to the Place when their show closed and turned in his key. His fealty to Alfred ended just as his marriage was coming under greater pressure because of Beck’s feelings for Bill James. Writing to her years later, he recalled that day, a turning point in his relations with Alfred, and, in a sense, with her: “The day I walked into the Photo-Secession in 1907 was a great moment in my life…but the day I walked out of An American Place in 1932 was not less good. It was fresh air and personal liberation from something that had become, for me at least, second-rate, corrupt, meaningless.”

  For Beck, who was just coming into her own, the situation was less straightforward. “Isn’t there something we all can do to go back to the warmth and understanding of the ‘old days’?” she would ask Alfred. “Won’t you write to Paul some day and tell him of the Place and all the things that have always meant so much to him and always will?”

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  . . .

  At this time, Georgia was also coping with the increased tensions in the group by resigning herself to Alfred’s infatuation with Dorothy. It was a fait accompli, something that she had to live with despite her distress. However, that spring, as she took steps to assert her autonomy, Georgia’s actions only worsened the strained relations between herself and Alfred.

  To show that Americans were as capable as Rivera at depicting contemporary life, the Museum of Modern Art organized an exhibition of murals by local artists for the opening of its new home on West Fifty-third Street. The curators, Julien Levy and Lincoln Kirstein, invited O’Keeffe, along with Stuart Davis, Sheeler, and Steichen, to submit designs on “some aspect of ‘The Post-War World.’ ” Not surprisingly, most entries were concerned with social issues. Manhattan, O’Keeffe’s seven-foot-high panel (the central one in a triptych called Skyscrapers) was the exception. Over its jazzy cityscape painted in red, white, p
ink, and mauve floated three artificial flowers, a witty composition that evoked her sense of humor.

  On the strength of this entry, Donald Deskey, who was in charge of decor at Radio City Music Hall, asked O’Keeffe to paint the murals for the ladies’ powder room (the Radio City building, part of Rockefeller Center, was to be completed by the end of the year). She accepted his terms, fifteen hundred dollars, even though she often earned twice as much for one canvas, because she had long wanted “to paint something for a particular space—and paint it big.” When Stieglitz learned the terms of the contract, he berated her for disregarding his role as her agent, gallerist, and spouse. She held her ground but fretted about the pain that she was causing him—at a time when he felt free to continue his betrayal of her with Dorothy.

  Georgia’s unease is expressed, guardedly, in a letter to her Texas friend Russell Vernon Hunter. Without explaining the predicament in which she found herself, she wrote, “You are wise—so wise—in staying in your own country that you know and love—I am divided between my man and a life with him—and some thing of the outdoors—of your world—that is in my blood—and that I know I will never get rid of—I have to get along with my divided self the best way I can.” Over the next months, torn between her desire to return to the Southwest and her fear of the consequences, she would attempt to live as a “divided self.”

  In mid-May, when Georgia went to the lake with her photographer friend Marjorie Content to prepare the house, she was unsure whether she would stay there over the summer. In June, having all but decided to return to New Mexico, she wrote to Alfred, who was still in New York, “It is very difficult to go through the motions of starting—and get myself off when I have really no desire to go—I go because I think I’ll be able to work.” He urged her to decide for herself. But when she chose to stay at the lake, he worried that she would not manage to work there after all—without pointing out that her presence would keep him from seeing Dorothy. Georgia decided to stay where she was; her decision, rather than bringing them closer, widened the gulf between them.

  Over the next months, Alfred wrote constantly to Dorothy and sneaked into the village for phone calls. In August, after spending a few days in New York, Georgia told him, “I haven’t felt that I was with you at all these weeks there—You seemed to be somewhere else.” Alfred informed Dorothy that he had lost any desire for Georgia; they lacked “spiritual togetherness.” In another letter, he recounted a dream in which Georgia divorced him to marry her “friend,” Gustav Eckstein, and said he could not make love to her because “that would be adultery.”

  Divorce was on everyone’s mind that summer when Alfred’s brother Lee divorced his wife to marry his mistress of many years. Reflecting on this turn of events, Georgia wrote to Beck, who was again in Taos, “Makes me feel that my grandfather that I never saw will rise out of his grave and start flirting with my daughter that I never had.” She added, “I sit in the sun in the boat on the lake…and let it go at that.”

  In the attempt to find some pleasure, Georgia went to Canada with Georgia Engelhard, by then a budding artist. On their trip to the Gaspé (inspired by Paul’s photographs?), Georgia painted tightly cropped studies of the peninsula’s long white barns and large-scale images of its decorated crosses, including a seven-foot-tall one with a bloodred heart, which amused her: “On the Gaspé, the cross was Catholicism as the French saw it—gay, witty.” The two Georgias returned to Canada several times to bring back contraband liquor; on one foray, they were relieved of their booty and made to pay charges—an incident that caused a row when Alfred opened the letter containing the receipt for Georgia’s fine.

  About this time, Alfred enlisted friends to help him talk Georgia out of the mural project. “Everyone dislikes the Idea of Radio City,” she told Brett, “but I feel that has nothing to do with my wanting to paint a room—so there we are all in a squabble.” What was worse, work on the powder room had to be postponed because construction was weeks behind schedule. Georgia went to New York in September to gauge the delay and signed a contract stipulating November 1 as the date of completion. A week later, Alfred tried to have the contract voided, arguing that he was the one to set the terms of her engagement. Over the next weeks, Stieglitz badgered Deskey with proposals. O’Keeffe’s fee should be five thousand dollars, or she could work for free except for materials; in either case, the deadline should be changed. (The final contract is no longer extant.)

  Georgia stayed by herself at the lake to work on her designs. In her anxiety about the project, she turned to her confidantes in the Southwest, who were closer to her in spirit than those around her. “I can’t paint a room that isn’t built,” she grumbled to Brett, “and if the time between the building and the opening isn’t long enough I can’t do it either.” The situation was “precarious.” After another visit to the site, Georgia told Beck of her sympathy for the workers “who have to struggle with every one from Mr. Rockefeller…to the stone mason.” She added, “I am a bit worn….My Gawd won’t I get hell if I cant make a go of it.”

  Georgia returned in October, only to find Radio City in chaos. Her canvas would not stay on the walls because the plaster was still wet. “So I’ve told them I am not going to do it,” she announced to Beck: “I am in a sulk because I want to do it but I can’t.” Thanking Beck for the dried sage she had sent from Taos, Georgia wished her well in the land they both loved. Accounts of Georgia’s relinquishment of the project vary, some describing her in tears and others insisting that she remained calm. Stieglitz called Deskey the next day to say that she was having a nervous breakdown. A few days later, Georgia told Russell Vernon Hunter that she no longer wanted to paint at Radio City but still had “a fever to do a room.” She added wryly, “Our kitchen has the best plaster so I thought I’d start on that.” (Deskey replaced her and extended the deadline.)

  In November, Georgia had some weeks of peace alone at the lake, when she may or may not have painted the kitchen. She took walks, puttered about the house, and readied her canvases in case she felt like painting. After finding no satisfaction, she told Alfred that she had stopped trying. He sympathized: “I know how difficult it is to get agoing feeling as you do….But one dare not give in. That would mean complete paralysis. —That’s what’s threatening the whole country.” He wondered if she took an interest in the election, which Franklin Roosevelt had won by a landslide after promising a New Deal for the beleaguered country. Georgia replied, “There isn’t an idea in my head so I get out and use my legs….My body is first rate—The rest of me is quite empty.”

  Just the same, during these weeks her mind was not at rest. Georgia knew that Alfred was working with Dorothy on a book of her poems; he would publish it in the new year under the title Dualities. Having accepted his ultimatum about the Radio City murals, Georgia hoped that she would avoid further alienating his affections. But she had given way against her better judgment. By mid-November, she was at such an impasse that the only solution seemed to be living apart from Alfred. Three days after her forty-fifth birthday, he apologized lamely for his part in her depression: “I did feel miserable knowing you so down & much because of ‘me’—Yes, ‘me’ in quotation marks.”

  Soon after her return to New York to prepare her next exhibition, Georgia’s distress manifested itself in headaches, chest pains, weeping fits, and an irregular heartbeat. She followed Lee Stieglitz’s prescription—bed rest and a bland diet—for several weeks, until her condition grew worse, aggravated by Alfred’s tendency to hover while plaguing her with questions. Just before Christmas, she moved to her sister Anita’s Park Avenue apartment. Lee thought that she was suffering from early menopause (this was not the case); Alfred’s visits were kept to once a week for thirty minutes. Her depression deepened.

  On February 1, Georgia checked herself into the well-regarded upper East Side Doctors Hospital, a decision with which Alfred did not interfere. That day he wrote:

 
You must not worry about anything & above all not about me. I want you to get well. That’s the one thing I want above all things. And you will get well. I am relying absolutely on you to be good—to give yourself a full chance. —I know the changes must disturb you some. —All changes disturb even sensitive well people.

  Over the next weeks, as she underwent treatment for psychoneurosis, Georgia tried “by inches and minutes” to resume normal life. Being ill was “funny,” she told a friend; “it always seems it isn’t intended for me.”

  The staff encouraged Georgia to see one person each day. Beck, who was in New York that winter, went to see Georgia’s show and visited her at the hospital. The women discussed their equally uncertain plans for the future, and Beck sent gifts that she hoped would give Georgia pleasure, white silk handkerchiefs and one of her reverse oil paintings. Gradually, Alfred was allowed to visit more often. His belief that Georgia had a heart condition was, in a sense, correct: Her heart had broken in the attempt to win him back. But she had not lost her sense of humor. “Getting over whatever I have is a very strange performance,” she told Beck: “I’ll not go into it—but you would certainly laugh.”

  In March, Georgia made a quick trip to see her exhibition, which had been hung by Alfred with Dorothy’s help. She would have been struck by the placement of the tall Gaspé cross with a red heart and the delicate Bleeding Heart, a pastel of two pendant blossoms, each on their separate walls. O’Keeffe’s images, McBride wrote, formed a “soul reflection” that seemed to have been “wished” onto the canvas. In a letter to Beck, who had joined Paul on his travels, Georgia wrote that she had returned to the Place briefly: “Couldn’t stay but a few moments—but I got there.”