Foursome

by Carolyn Burke

  “One of the early pupils”: Murdock Pemberton, “The Art Galleries,” The New Yorker, April 23, 1932, p. 46.

  “a suave sense of finish”: McCausland, “Paul Strand’s Photographs…,” April 17, 1932.

  “The day I walked”: PS to RSS, December 13, 1966, CCP.

  “Isn’t there something”: RSS to AS, December 19, 1933, ASA/YCAL.

  “to paint something”: GOK to Blanche Matthias [April 1929?], Robinson, p. 371.

  “You are wise”: GOK to Russell Vernon Hunter [spring 1932], Cowart and Hamilton, p. 207.

  “It is very difficult”: GOK to ASS [June 1, 1932], MFO, p. 624.

  “I haven’t felt”: GOK to AS, August 1, 1932, MFO, p. 635.

  “spiritual togetherness”: AS to Norman, June 26, 1932, YCAL; MFO, p. 632.

  “that would be adultery”: AS to Norman, July 13, 1932, YCAL; MFO, p. 633.

  “Makes me feel that my grandfather”: GOK to RSS, October 6, 1932, RSJ/YCAL.

  “On the Gaspé”: GOK, quoted in Kuh, p. 202.

  “Everyone dislikes the Idea”: GOK to Dorothy Brett [September 1932], Cowart and Hamilton, pp. 209–10.

  “I can’t paint a room”: ibid.

  “who have to struggle”: GOK to RSS, October 6, 1932, RSJ/YCAL.

  “So I’ve told them”: GOK to RSS [October 1932], RSJ/YCAL.

  “a fever to do a room”: GOK to Russell Vernon Hunter [October 1932], YCAL; Cowart and Hamilton, p. 211.

  “I know how difficult”: AS to GOK, November 6, 1932, MFO, p. 654.

  “There isn’t an idea”: GOK to AS [November 9, 1932], MFO, p. 657.

  “I did feel miserable”: AS to GOK, November 18, 1932, MFO, p. 666, n. 522.

  “You must not worry”: AS to GOK, February 1, 1933, MFO, p. 676.

  “by inches and minutes”: GOK to Russell Vernon Hunter [early February 1933], YCAL; Cowart and Hamilton, p. 212.

  “Getting over whatever”: GOK to RSS, March 1933, YCAL.

  “soul reflection”: Henry McBride, “Georgia O’Keeffe’s Exhibition,” New York Sun, January 14, 1933.

  “Couldn’t stay but”: GOK to RSS, March 1933, RSJ/YCAL.

  “I like Margery”: ibid.

  CHAPTER 17: DON’T LOOK AHEAD OR BEHIND

  “I did pick myself up”: GOK to RSS, April 1933, RSJ/YCAL.

  “The doctor is insistent”: GOK to RSS, June 7, 1933, RSJ/YCAL.

  “Perhaps she will find”: Clurman to PS, November 21, 1932, CCP.

  “Beck ‘broke down’ ”: Clurman to PS, February 28, 1933, CCP.

  “With the show”: PS, quoted in Tomkins, “Profile: Look to the Things Around You,” The New Yorker, September 16, 1974, p. 44.

  “I put myself in Chavez’ hands”: PS to AS, February 5, 1933, ASA/YCAL.

  “Too cruel”: PS to AS, February 5, 1933, ASA/YCAL.

  “These people have”: DeWitt, pp. 73–74.

  “the Indians live”: PS to Marin, September 1, 1933, Greenough, Paul Strand, p. 88.

  “I made a series”: PS to Irving Browning, September 29, 1934, in ibid., p. 96.

  “serious and poignant”: Augustín Chávez, catalog statement for “31 Paintings on Glass by Rebecca Salsbury Strand” (Museum of New Mexico, July 16–August 17, 1934), which distinguishes the works discussed in this paragraph as having been made in Mexico.

  “a very fine little gentleman”: RSSJ to the Baasches, January 7, 1937, CCP.

  “So you are a real Mexican”: AS to RSS, March 14, 1933, ASA/YCAL.

  “It is warm and slow”: GOK to RSS, April 1933, RSJ/YCAL.

  “It was I”: PS to Kurt Baasch, November 26, 1933, CCP.

  “exposed, vulnerable”: RSS to PS, August 28, 1933, CCP.

  “a godsend”: RSS to PS [August 29, 1933], CCP.

  “pathetic”: AS to Arthur Dove, June 25, 1933, ASA/YCAL.

  “a great deal of knowledge” and “Religious Ecstasy”: Paul Rosenfeld and Dorothy Brett, quoted in Norman, Encounters, pp. 110–11.

  “I have done nothing”: GOK to Russell Vernon Hunter, October 21, 1933, ASA/YCAL.

  “I just sit”: GOK to RSS [August?], 1933, RSJ/YCAL.

  “the garbage carriers”: GOK to RSS [1933], RSJ/YCAL.

  “Try not to take it”: GOK to RSS, November 25, 1933, RSJ/YCAL.

  “I am supposed”: RSS to PS, November 6, 1933, CCP.

  “If one were tempted”: Donald J. Bear, “In Unique Exhibition of Paintings on Glass,” Rocky Mountain News [Dec. 17?], 1933, YCAL.

  “I do manage”: RSS to AS, December 19, 1933, ASA/YCAL.

  “I see very clearly”: AS to RSS, December 22, 1933, ASA/YCAL.

  “I feel as if I’m waking”: GOK to RSS, November 25, 1933, RSJ/YCAL.

  “I said nothing”: GOK to RSS, December 1933, RSJ/YCAL.

  “The principal things” to “I really wish”: GOK to PS, December 26, 1933, CCP.

  “The greatest Christmas”: AS to GOK, December 26, 1933, MFO, p. 736.

  “I never saw such a performance”: GOK to Toomer, January 10, 1934, YCAL.

  “I seem to have come out”: GOK to Toomer, January 2, 1934, YCAL.

  “in such a quiet”: GOK to Toomer, January 3, 1934, YCAL.

  CHAPTER 18: ANOTHER WAY OF LIVING

  “Oh Georgia”: AS to GOK, January 1, 1934, MFO, pp. 738–39.

  “I hope 1934”: AS to RSS, December 22, 1933, ASA/YCAL.

  “solidarity”: PS to Kurt and Isabel Baasch, November 23, 1933, CCP.

  “These are critical years”: PS to Adams, October 14, 1933, Busselle and Stack, p. 96.

  “In a world”: PS, quoted in Robert Stebbins, “Redes,” New Theatre, November 1936; Krippner et al., p. 371.

  “always a little”: Rodakiewicz, quoted in Tomkins PS notes, MOMA.

  “the most doctrinaire”: Zinnemann, quoted in Mike Weaver, “Dynamic Realist,” in Stange, ed., p. 199.

  “There is plenty of Trickiness”: PS to Carlos Chávez, November 4, 1934, James Krippner, “Traces, Images and Fictions: Paul Strand in Mexico,” The Americas 63, no. 3 (2007): 380.

  “If H[enwar] is not interested”: RSS to PS, November 6, 1933, CCP.

  “By that time”: RSS to PS, November 16, 1934, CCP.

  “truly I don’t want to marry”: ibid.

  “There is a decided balking”: RSS to MDL, Thursday [1934], MDL/YCAL.

  “Yours is a repulsive spirit”: RSS to MDL, n.d. [1934], ibid.

  “She had begun”: Spud Johnson, “Becky,” Taos News, July 12, 1968; Campbell, p. 309.

  “The innocence,” “spiritual honesty,” and “There is much room”: catalog statements for “31 Paintings on Glass by Rebecca Salsbury Strand” (Museum of New Mexico, July 16–August 17, 1934).

  “During dinner”: Jadwiga Monkiewicz, “Tales from Taos,” Albuquerque Journal, July 28, 1934; Campbell, p. 276.

  “I started to paint”: GOK to Toomer, January 7, 1934, YCAL; Cowart and Hamilton, p. 216.

  “These pictures are not derivations”: Lewis Mumford, The New Yorker, February 10, 1934, pp. 48–49.

  “I do not particularly enjoy”: GOK to Toomer, February 8, 1934, YCAL; Cowart and Hamilton, pp. 218–19.

  “There were talks”: GOK to Toomer, February 14, 1934, YCAL.

  “another way of living”: GOK to Toomer, March 5, 1934, YCAL; Cowart and Hamilton, p. 219.

  “I begin to think”: GOK to RSS, April 26, 1934, RSJ/YCAL.

  “I like it very much”: GOK to Toomer, May 11, 1934, YCAL; Cowart and Hamilton, p. 221.

  “I really have to move”: GOK to RSS, April 26, 1934, RSJ/YCAL.

  “I like you Mabel”: GOK to MDL, n.d. [1934], MDL/YCAL.

  �
��I don’t know what state”: AS to GOK, July 13–14, 1934, ASA/YCAL.

  “The last year”: GOK to AS, July 26, 1934, Haskell, ed., pp. 204–5. O’Keeffe added, “The difference in us is that when I felt myself attracted to someone else I realized I must make a choice—and I made it in your favor….You seemed to feel there was no need to make a choice—when a similar situation arose for you.”

  “the same in spite of”: GOK to Ettie Stettheimer, August 7, 1934, YCAL; courtesy of Wanda Corn.

  “A red hill”: GOK, catalog statement for “Georgia O’Keeffe: Exhibition of Oils and Pastels” (An American Place, January 22 to March 17, 1939).

  “in imperfect condition”: AS, catalog statement for “Alfred Stieglitz: Exhibition of Photographs (1884–1934)” (An American Place, December 11, 1934–January 17, 1935).

  “The book at once clarifies”: Van Doren, in AS, Alfred Stiegiltz: Exhibition, unpaginated.

  “a Wonder”: AS to Arthur Dove, December 20, 1934, ASA/YCAL.

  “profound significance”: Edward Jewell, “In the Realm of Art,” New York Times, December 16, 1934.

  “a sort of half-idolatrous”: Edward Jewell, “Alfred Stieglitz and Art in America,” New York Times, December 23, 1934.

  “the most virile”: “Arts: U.S. Scene,” Time, December 24, 1934, p. 25.

  “a Hoboken Jew”: Thomas Craven, Modern Art: The Men, the Movements, the Meaning (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1934); quoted in Whelan, Alfred Stieglitz, p. 554.

  “a mania”: Thomas Hart Benton, “American and/or Alfred Stieglitz,” Common Sense, January 1935, p. 22.

  “a dilapidated house”: GOK, quoted in Calvin Tomkins, “The Rose in the Eye Looked Pretty Fine,” The New Yorker, pp. 48, 50.

  “the increasing gangsterism”: Dorothy Norman, “Alfred Stieglitz Speaks and Is Overheard,” The Art of Today 6 (February 1935); quoted in Brennan, pp. 206–7. See Brennan’s persuasive discussion of Stieglitz’s relations with Benton, pp. 202–31.

  “a portentous and heavy document”: John Chamberlain, “Books of the Times,” New York Times, December 31, 1934.

  “What one took”: E. M. Benson, “Alfred Stieglitz: The Man and the Book,” American Magazine of Art, January 1935, p. 40.

  “perfidious”: RSS to PS, November 16, 1934, CCP.

  “I have come”: PS to Ted Stevenson, October 7, 1934, in Busselle and Stack, p. 107.

  “Aside from my fondness”: GOK to McBride, early 1940s, YCAL; Cowart and Hamilton, p. 244.

  ALFRED

  “as the father”: Cunningham to AS, December 18, 1934, quoted in Lorenz, p. 21.

  “rock-steady”: AS to Cunningham, February 3, 1935, Lorenz, p. 22.

  “the camera’s almost legendary” and “Fifty-one years”: Vanity Fair, March 1935, pp. 42, 15.

  “climactic”: Mumford, “The Art Galleries,” The New Yorker, December 22, 1934, p. 30. Mumford wrote that Dualities, the portrait of Dorothy Norman, was “almost diabolic both in its symbolism and its technical perfection.”

  “That’s the one thing”: AS to Dove, January 2, 1935, ASA/YCAL.

  “I would not have”: AA to PS, September 12, 1933, CCP.

  “I have done one”: AA to AS, March 15, 1936, Hoffman, Alfred Stieglitz, p. 296.

  “I open 1936–1937”: AS to RSS, September 27, 1936, ASA/YCAL.

  “queer”: AS to RSS, October 14, 1936, ASA/YCAL.

  “She has a penthouse”: AS to AA, April 6, 1936, YCAL.

  “I haven’t been well”: AS to AA, July 30, 1936, YCAL.

  “an all-enfolding armor”: AA to AS, October 23, 1933, YCAL; quoted in Greenough, Alfred Stieglitz, p. 236.

  “The Place”: AA to AS, November 29, 1936, Gray, p. 35.

  “brawnier and at the same time”: H.D., “Late Oil of Demuth Seen at Art Show,” New York Times, November 28, 1936.

  “much admired”: AS to RSS, January 7, 1937 [misdated by AS “36”), ASA/YCAL. Beck’s oil sold for $125, from which Alfred deducted $31.25 for expenses.

  “Will you and I”: AS to Weston, September 3, 1938, YCAL; quoted in Greenough, Alfred Stieglitz, pp. 218–19.

  “a dry open space”: GOK to William Einstein, July 1937, YCAL; quoted in Robinson, p. 425.

  “If I had met him”: Henry Miller, Twice a Year, no. 8/9 (1942): 153.

  “politics & the social”: AS to AA, October 20, 1933, YCAL; quoted in Whelan, Alfred Stieglitz, p. 565.

  “So little vision”: AS to Weston, September 3, 1938, YCAL; quoted in Greenough, Alfred Stieglitz, pp. 218–19.

  “All seems so peaceful”: GOK to AS, June 26, 1941, YCAL; quoted in Hoffman, Alfred Stieglitz, p. 403.

  “You would have gone”: AS to GOK, August 22, 1941, YCAL; quoted in ibid., p. 404.

  “Correspondence dispensed with”: Lowe, p. 338.

  “It was really beautiful”: Norman to PS, November 4, 1940, CCP.

  “he could not accept”: Lowe, p. 363.

  “his courageous pioneering”: D[avid] H. Mc[Alpin], “The New Department of Photography,” Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 2, no. 8 (December 1940–January 1941): 2.

  “I see Alfred”: GOK to McBride, early 1940s, YCAL; Cowart and Hamilton, p. 244.

  “the heritage stemming”: Steichen, “The Fighting Photo-Secession,” Vogue, June 15, 1941, p. 22.

  “bowled over”: AS to Steichen, June 15, 1941, Edward Steichen Papers, MOMA.

  “I’m managing”: AS to Dove, July 31, 1941, YCAL; quoted in Whelan, Alfred Stieglitz, p. 567.

  “If I have the misfortune”: AS, quoted in Newhall [January 27, 1942], p. 122.

  “The beautiful living things”: Newhall, p. 123.

  “What a lucky man”: AS to Arthur Dove, September 11, 1943, YCAL; quoted in Whelan, Alfred Stieglitz, p. 568.

  “whom the younger” to “the great old man”: Nelson Morris, “Alfred Stieglitz: A Color Portrait and Notes on Photography’s Grand Old Man,” Popular Photography, March 1944, p. 53.

  “suffering from a heart attack”: Thomas Craven, “Stieglitz—Old Master of the Camera,” The Saturday Evening Post, January 8, 1944, p. 14.

  “He started” to “It doesn’t seem”: “Weegee Meets a Great Man,” PM, May 7, 1944. Weegee published a slightly different account of their meeting in Naked City (New York: Da Capo, 1945), pp. 233–35.

  “Over the past”: Lowe, p. 374.

  “steeling”: AS to GOK, April 16, 1944, YCAL.

  “It is a glorious”: AS to James Johnson Sweeney, July 3, 1946, YCAL; Pollitzer, p. 247.

  “perhaps the greatest”: James Thrall Soby, “The Fine Arts: To the Ladies,” The Saturday Review, July 6, 1946, pp. 14–15.

  “How beautiful”: AS to GOK, June 4, 1946, YCAL; Pollitzer, p. 250.

  “You need what”: AS to GOK, June 5, 1946, YCAL: Pollitzer, p. 250.

  “Ever surprised”: AS to GOK, June 6, 1946, YCAL; Pollitzer, p. 250.

  “Georgia accepted condolences”: Lowe, p. 377.

  “unless—maybe to stand”: GOK to William Howard Schubart, August 8, 1950, YCAL; Cowart and Hamilton, p. 254.

  “strained but under control”: PS to the Newhalls, n.d., Whelan, Alfred Stieglitz, p. 573.

  “absolutely disgusting”: Nancy Newhall to Adams, July 15, 1946, Mary Street Alinder and Andrea Gray Stillman, eds., Ansel Adams: Letters and Images, 1916–1968 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988), p. 176.

  REBECCA

  “I first knew Stieglitz”: RSJ, in Norman, ed., Stieglitz Memorial Portfolio, p. 25.

  “more or less to hell”: RSSJ to the Baasches, April 13, 1938, CCP.

  “I’d much rather”: RSSJ to the Baasches, January 7, 1937, CCP.

  “I expected to find”: RSSJ to the Baasches, April 13, 1938, CCP.

 
“artists, writers, truck drivers”: James, Allow Me to Present, p. 49.

  “Becky shunned”: Waters, pp. 33–34.

  “This is decidedly”: RSSJ, “Letters to the Editor,” The Taos Review and the Taos Valley News, January 12, 1939; Campbell, p. 284.

  “noted artist”: “Display Recalls Buffalo Bill Wild West Show,” Houston Chronicle, February 12, 1938.

  “a tremendous character”: Nate Salsbury III, interview with the author, July 26, 2011.

  “Becky linked two”: Morrill, p. 129.

  “I am glad I”: RSJ to PS, July 2, 1940, CCP.

  “cruel”: GOK to RSJ, n.d. [spring 1945], RSJ/YCAL.

  “I feel you get”: RSJ to PS, May 14, 1945, CCP.

  “I…have philosophically”: ibid.

  “These scenes made me”: RSJ, in Rebecca Salsbury James, exhibition catalog (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico, 1991), unpaginated.

  “The paintings on glass”: Luhan, Taos and Its Artists, p. 30.

  “the best-known”: ibid., p. 12.

  “Taos is going”: ibid., p. 43.

  “but not with brush”: James, Allow Me to Present, p. 13.

  “because they felt”: ibid., p. 58.

  “dark and cool” and “There was always”: Florence Ilfeld Beier, interview with the author, August 19, 2011.

  “I have to smile”: RSJ to PS, July 2, 1940, CCP.

  “one didn’t talk”: ibid.

  “This, I thought”: RSJ, “Paintings in Yarn,” Woman’s Day, April 1, 1964, p. 40.

  “the most free-wheeling”: RSJ, Embroideries by Rebecca James (Santa Fe: Museum of International Folk Art, 1963), p. 8.

  “Both the painter”: ibid., p. 9.

  “Mrs. James demonstrates”: E. Boyd, foreword, in Embroideries by Rebecca James, p. 3.

  “New York seems”: RSJ to GOK, September 16, 1950, RSJ/YCAL.

  “The end of an era”: RSJ to PS, September 14, 1950, CCP.

  “hushed”: Alfred Frankenstein, “New Gallery Shows Young Artist’s Work,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 4, 1951; Campbell, pp. 297–98.