The fact that O’Keeffe chose the same shade of blue that she used in 1915 adds to the possibility that she completed these watercolors as vindication of her earliest instincts. (She even titled a hemisphere enclosing a circle of white paper Like an Early Blue Abstraction). O’Keeffe also returned to her earliest cane-shape but executed it in red with splotches, Red Line with Circle. A pair of fuzzy green brushstrokes with a recumbent slash of salmon recalls her early landscape abstractions of 1917.
These were her last unassisted paintings, and they hum with the directness and clarity of the works that first drew O’Keeffe to Stieglitz’s attention. They are mementos of the abstract watercolors that she most enjoyed painting, and were never exhibited in her lifetime.
Upon publication, the success of O’Keeffe’s autobiography was immediate and overwhelming. Thereafter, Hamilton became an indispensable part of her life; no one could replace him.
O’Keeffe and Hamilton spent Columbus Day in Washington, D.C. Under a blue sky, with tree leaves turning yellow, they watched people flying kites on the Mall. They visited the Hirshhorn Museum as well as the Freer Collection so O’Keeffe could take in the Chinese bronzes, jades, and screens. The Washington Monument was the crowning moment of the trip, as she could see light reflecting off the white column against the sky.
The simplicity and scale of the obelisk generated an idea, and when she got home, O’Keeffe attempted a few line drawings. Soon after, she was on the phone to New York ordering linen canvas and tubes of lead white and cerulean blue paint. She had an idea for a painting of the monument cropped at the top to make a white trapezoid against a blue background.31
John Poling, a twenty-three-year-old handyman, had helped Hamilton put an addition on his adobe home. In the summer of 1976, Hamilton, who excused himself from the task by explaining he had O’Keeffe’s business to attend to in New York, hired Poling to paint the trim around the Ghost Ranch house. After a few days without Hamilton, O’Keeffe asked Poling to read mail to her and join her for meals. Finally, she asked him to help her paint. This was not the first time she had sought assistance. The gardener, Benlarmino Lopez, had helped her with the clay pots.
In itself, the act is revealing of how desperately O’Keeffe wanted to keep working. A perfectionist in all areas, throughout her career O’Keeffe had graded her own work by putting her initials in the middle of a star on the backs of paintings she felt to be winners. Less-favored works received only a signature or initials. She regularly destroyed old and new work that wasn’t up to her standards. As Hamilton pointed out, she never gave up.
O’Keeffe was attempting to paint her latest canvas when she asked for Poling’s opinion about the evenness of her primer. When Poling tentatively told her that the large patches of white were spread unevenly, she seemed defeated. She explained to him, “It’s like there are little holes in my vision. I can’t see straight on very well. But around the edge there are little holes where I can see quite clearly.”32
Poling wasn’t trained as a painter, so O’Keeffe explained her process to him. Splashing some turpentine into an empty coffee can with a quarter of a tube of lead white, she asked Poling to stir the mixture and apply it thinly with a wide brush. The primer was left to dry over the weekend, and when Poling returned, O’Keeffe asked him to draw a line with charcoal, using a yardstick, to delineate the area to be painted; then, she moved close to see if it measured the right distance from the top of the canvas. “Now, what this needs is some blue across the top. Just a long blue band,” she said, indicating a table with several tubes of blue paint. “I want the cerulean blue. . . . Squeeze some out on the glass and stir it up.”33
On the transparent palette, Poling applied circles of bright blue, which O’Keeffe mashed flat with a palette knife. Handing Poling the knife, she told him to carry on until there was a thin layer covering the glass. With her left hand on her hip, she used her right to dip her brush into the blue and apply it with a practiced rhythm. But, she only painted in patches, and the white undercoat remained visible. After several minutes, Poling pointed out that the paint was thick in some areas and that there was no paint in others. O’Keeffe tried to touch up the bare spots but grew frustrated. She could not see well enough and soon grew weary.
“I think you better do it,” she said, handing him the brush. Poling followed her directions, covering the canvas with flat blue color, and O’Keeffe explained that he could use a palette knife to scrape off any built-up areas of paint. As he approached the charcoal line, she brought him a few smaller brushes to fill in the space. When he neared completion, O’Keeffe handed Poling a large thick brush that she had owned for many years and kept as a treasure in its own box. (She told him to clean it carefully because it was no longer available.) Working from a sense of touch, O’Keeffe used the large flat brush to gently smooth the surface of the canvas, erasing ridges and texture marks. She moved from left to right, brushing a three- to four-inch area, stopping frequently to clean the paint off the bristles with a little turpentine-soaked paper towel. With the same brush she blended the borders between colors.
As a painting of the patio door took shape, O’Keeffe decided to add an ocher wall. First, she asked Poling to retrieve a copy of the dog-eared 1934 Max Doerner’s The Materials of the Artist and Their Use in Painting; With Notes on the Techniques of the Old Masters. Poling read to her about the compatibility of certain colors, and she mumbled, “That’s all right then. . . . The first thing you learn is what colors go with other ones. You learn all that and get it out of the way so you can paint.”34 Slowly, the ocher wall was filled in and the door was added in a bright red.
Surprisingly, O’Keeffe was a patient teacher, explaining each step of the procedure to Poling. She seemed exhilarated to be able to participate in the act of painting, even at a one-step remove. Poling, who was one of the few people who had ever witnessed O’Keeffe’s painting technique, came to believe that their relationship had altered from simply employer-employee. He explained, “The simple tasks done with her were the means of becoming acquainted, of exchanging likes and dislikes, and ultimately of becoming her friend,”35
But Poling soon learned the sad lesson of his predecessors who had thought themselves “friends” of the temperamental artist.
After completing the patio door picture, O’Keeffe used Poling on her idea for a painting of the obelisk, From a Day with Juan. But Hamilton returned to discover Poling’s promotion from errand boy to aide-de-camp and flew into a jealous rage. Poling was summarily dismissed. When From a Day with Juan was reproduced in ARTnews magazine with no mention of his involvement, Poling asked O’Keeffe about getting credit. When O’Keeffe was dismissive, Poling took his story to the press. O’Keeffe, who had been trying to keep her blindness from becoming general knowledge, was distressed but archly dismissed his account, noting, “Mr. Poling was the equivalent of a palette knife.”36 Poling joined the legions of discarded employees who had thought themselves friends of Miss O’Keeffe’s.
After Poling’s dismissal O’Keeffe painted six more versions of the white obelisk against the blue sky, this time with the help of her newly promoted gardener, Benlarmino Lopez. One painting was dedicated to Hamilton and given to him with the odd acknowledgment “with rattlesnakes / and Love and affection.”
IX
At the outset of 1977, President Gerald Ford awarded O’Keeffe the Medal of Freedom, the highest American civilian honor. Five months later, she received an honorary degree from the College of Santa Fe. Such accolades offered ballast as she prepared herself for a very difficult decision.
Bry had been managing O’Keeffe’s life and career from the East Coast for thirty years, doing everything from selling the artist’s paintings to shipping the out-of-fashion, hard to find underwear that O’Keeffe preferred to Abiquiu. Still, Bry’s New York location left her at a disadvantage in terms of her personal relationship with O’Keeffe. In letters to friends and acquaintances, O’Keeffe had been complaining about Bry for many years. S
he found her boring and methodical. She complained that Bry slept late, and was “the biggest foot-dragger of them all.” Bry, who was attempting to direct as much of O’Keeffe’s work as possible to established collectors and museums to ensure the artist’s place in history, felt that she was doggedly guarding O’Keeffe’s oeuvre.
“I kept a great deal off the market. I didn’t know I was keeping it for Juan,” Bry said. “I was planning for the long term, as her executor, I was very careful.”1
Barney Ebsworth, a St. Louis–based travel business magnate and art collector who owns several of O’Keeffe’s paintings as well as works by other American moderns, was invited by Bry to meet the artist in Abiquiu in the middle of the 1970s. Upon being introduced, an intimidated Ebsworth made a point of admiring her famous pin, the initials GOK woven together by sculptor Alexander Calder. She immediately confessed to Ebsworth, “This isn’t the one Calder made for me. That was brass and bronze. I had it re-made in silver to match my hair when I was in India.” A startled Ebsworth relaxed. “I then realized that she was a real woman,” he recalled. “She had an Irish temper and a great sense of humor.”2
Ebsworth had lunch with O’Keeffe and Bry. “It was the beginning of the end for Doris and I realized there were problems,” he noted. “Doris was trying to hang on to as many things as she could to get the commissions.” Hoping to buy another painting from O’Keeffe, halfway through the meal, Ebsworth asked about a swirling, earth-toned abstraction, “What about Nature Forms, Gaspé?”
When a loud argument between the two women broke out, a mortified Ebsworth pleaded for them to stop and withdrew his offer. As he later recalled, “I didn’t want to be between these two ladies in a fight.”3
In spring of 1977, Bry discovered that Hamilton was selling O’Keeffe’s paintings. When she protested about this erosion of her professional position, O’Keeffe abruptly ended their relationship and demanded the return of her works. When Bry refused, O’Keeffe sued her in federal district court in New York.
Hamilton protested the acrimony that ensued. “A lot of people don’t know how to have a friendship with someone their own age let alone someone who is sixty years older. They have a hard time understanding what these two people have in common, what their friendship could be about because there are a lot of lonely, alienated people who don’t have any relationships, much less one with a famous person.”
He added, “There is so much focus on our relationship in terms of her wealth but there was a whole learning experience for me that went way beyond having to support yourself. We were interested in ideas. But we also increased the price of her paintings from the seventies to the eighties by one hundred percent a year.”4
O’Keeffe paintings went from a 1972 high of $125,000 to close to a million by the mid-eighties. This can be attributed partly to a boom in the art market. And, as Hamilton justly pointed out, “I was able to bring her work to the attention of more collectors.”5
“Miss O’Keeffe had a good sense of what her pictures were worth,” he added. “She was a well-rounded person. She did her own taxes into her seventies. She knew exactly what she was earning, what her pictures were selling for. People would come, she would tell them the price and they would take it or leave it. She would not bargain.”6
Around this time, when she was feeling harassed by Bry, O’Keeffe was beset by others from her past who sought special favors.
A contingent from her hometown of Sun Prairie contacted O’Keeffe after the farmhouse where she was born burned to the ground in a fire. In lieu of this landmark, the citizens of Sun Prairie decided to dedicate a small park in the name of the famous artist. City commissioners sent news of this honor to O’Keeffe, invited her to the dedication, and wondered if she would donate a painting to the city. Uninterested in attending the park dedication, O’Keeffe was even less enthusiastic about giving away a picture. Informed of her decision, the city fathers turned spiteful. After circulating petitions and gathering signatures, they changed the name from O’Keeffe Park to Sheehan Park, after the area’s former football coach.7
After the Sun Prairie fiasco, Margaret and Frank Prosser’s son, Frank “Bucky” Prosser Jr., contacted O’Keeffe for the first time in decades. Prosser had several of Stieglitz’s photographs that his mother, the Lake George housekeeper, had picked out of the trash and brought home. She had also brought home an oil painting by Stieglitz’s father. Prosser had discovered that, on the reverse of that landscape, there was an oil painting of flowers painted by O’Keeffe. When Prosser had it delivered to the artist for her authentication, she instructed him to leave it with her for cleaning. Later, O’Keeffe called Prosser and chatted with him amiably for about half an hour about his memories of life on The Hill. But Prosser failed to get the painting back. After many requests by telephone, he went to Abiquiu to ask for its return in person. Prosser got as far as Hamilton, who told him that they intended to have the picture restored as soon as they had time. Repeated requests for the painting’s return were ignored. “I have a feeling that she destroyed it,” Prosser said.8
Actor Dennis Hopper, who had bought Mabel Dodge Luhan’s rambling old adobe in Taos in 1970, found O’Keeffe much changed by the presence of her new assistant. “I’m not a fan of Juan Hamilton,” he said. “I knew her before he came into her life and after. He treated her like a mindless child, which she never was.”9
Kiskadden, had also had enough: she told O’Keeffe that Hamilton’s insolence made it impossible for her to continue her visits, but that O’Keeffe was welcome any time at her home in Beverly Hills. As Kiskadden drove away, she recalled that the artist “looked miserable but stubborn.”10
Kiskadden wrote a concilatory note to O’Keeffe when she got home. She received a brutal reply. On September 3, 1977, to her friend of some forty years, O’Keeffe wrote, “I am astonished to find from your letter that you would think that I would wish to visit you or even wish to speak with you. . . . So there we are. Finished!”11
O’Keeffe had an artist’s self-centered personality that permitted her to place her art above mere human affairs. By this time in her life, however, it was fear that motivated O’Keeffe to end many long-standing relationships. Her eyesight had deteriorated to the point where she could no longer see if there was a rattlesnake in the courtyard or an intruder at the door. She had full-time help, but young village girls did not offer much security. Kiskadden felt that it was O’Keeffe’s blindness that led her to abandon much in order to keep Hamilton and, through him, a semblance of her independent life style.
With Hamilton at her side, O’Keeffe continued to travel widely, exhibit her paintings, and enjoy a surge of celebrity that was nearly incomprehensible to her. She could not have survived her last decade in Abiquiu without the physical, logistical, and emotional support of Hamilton. For every person who believed him to be manipulative and ungracious, there was another who thought that Hamilton enhanced the artist’s last years immeasurably. Tish Frank defended his role. “Juan did something no one else would do—around the clock having to be there, and she was not easy. He was a real companion.”12
In November 1977, Perry Miller Adato released a documentary film in honor of O’Keeffe’s ninetieth birthday, which was celebrated at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. The film did not reveal the artist’s frailty or blindness. Although O’Keeffe was shown climbing the pole ladder to the roof of her house in Adato’s film, the scene was rehearsed and staged: she no longer saw well enough to either climb a ladder or take in a view of the Pedernal. Nonetheless, the documentary brought O’Keeffe and her art to a wider audience. Magazines clamored for interviews.
She celebrated her ninetieth birthday in an intimate fashion with Hamilton and friends at Esther Johnson’s Cedar Lane Farm, where she had been a regular guest for some forty years. (Esther usually sent her Christmas gifts of expensive underwear and, in exchange, O’Keeffe once sent Esther an original brown dress that she had made). At Cedar Farm, Johnson and her French poodle, Goony, took O
’Keeffe on a long walk around the three-thousand-acre New Jersey estate.
During their visit, Hamilton brought O’Keeffe to the Johnson Atelier, a bronze foundry in Princeton where all of sculptor Seward Johnson’s realistic figures were cast. At the Atelier, Hamilton arranged for a bronze casting of O’Keeffe’s 1917 phallic sculpture. He also arranged to have her maquette of Spiral, the sculpture made with the guidance of Mary Callery in 1945, increased in scale to eleven feet and cast in aluminum as a limited edition.
O’Keeffe was thrilled with this effort: Hamilton installed one of the large white spirals in the courtyard of the Abiquiu house.
Although she completed only two pieces of sculpture, O’Keeffe felt the spiral’s form strong enough to serve as a gauge for the worth of her paintings. “If whatever I painted didn’t stand up against that, I knew it was wrong.” With a grin she added, “I don’t think it happened very often.”13
The attention O’Keeffe received increased tenfold in 1978 when Weston Naef, the ambitious photography curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, organized an exhibition of Stieglitz’s serial photographic portrait of O’Keeffe. The artist hadn’t looked at the prints since 1947, when she left them to the museum, and they hadn’t been shown publicly since the twenties.
In the show’s catalogue introduction, O’Keeffe expressed genuine wonder at photographs of herself, often unclothed, as a young woman. “When I look over the photographs Stieglitz took of me—some of them more than sixty years ago—I wonder who that person is. It is as if in my one life I had lived many lives,” she wrote. These photographs brought renewed interest in the aging woman who had once been a daring young artist. Throughout her entire life, O’Keeffe had quietly concealed the photographs, and attempted to bury this aspect of her relationship with Stieglitz. When the catalogue became available in bookstores, O’Keeffe’s family was scandalized. June O’Keeffe Sebring insisted that no one knew such images existed. “Claudia was horrified. She said, ‘Would you put this on your coffee table so children could see it?’”14
Full Bloom Page 60