January 1, 2016
In 1916, when Georgia O'Keeffe was 30 years old, she made the connection that would forever alter her life: Alfred Stieglitz. From their first meeting, she became the married photographer's muse and mistress, while he in turn supported and encouraged her art. Their volatile affair gave birth to the career of one of America's greatest female artists, but not without cost. Throughout her life, O'Keeffe struggled with the impact her relationship with Stieglitz had on her art, its perception in the marketplace, and her own sense of self-worth. Tripp's (Game of Secrets) writing is romantic, poetic, and flows as smoothly as her artist subject's brushstrokes in her famous floral studies. However, the trouble with biographical novels is where the author's vision and history collide. Tripp's language and the dreamy feeling it evokes at times feels at odds with a relationship so tempestuous and flawed from its start. VERDICT Recommended for those who enjoy the genre.--Leigh Wright, Bridgewater, NJ
Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
March 15, 2016
A much-celebrated--and misunderstood--painter peers across decades to ask: what would I have become without the lover who first promoted my work? "This is not a love story," she promises, before Tripp (Game of Secrets, 2011, etc.) re-creates O'Keeffe's unannounced visit to Alfred Stieglitz's New York gallery, just missing a show of abstract drawings she's been sending him from Texas--truly, one of the sexiest "meets" of all time. In short order, he rehangs all of the work so he can photograph her with it and within a year, has thrown over his dismal-but-financially-advantageous 25 years of marriage to nest with his young sibyl and capture every inch of her with his camera. The nudes revive his career, but what's in it for O'Keeffe, who hasn't sold a painting? Tripp soon locates the wrinkle in this storybook relationship: "You will be a legend," Stieglitz tells O'Keeffe, if she sticks with her more representational (and sexually provocative) studies of oversize flowers--which will more easily win over critics and attract customers who tend to shy away from purely abstract work. She takes the advice and is crowned best woman painter of the modernist generation. Over time, O'Keeffe gets pulled back to the Southwestern landscape, the one place she can free her mind of her lover's unquenchable thirst for young female adoration and--most bitter to her--his refusal to father a child (he has his reasons). Artful dialogue and snappy segues whiz a reader through 30 years of professional and domestic Sturm und Drang plus cameo appearances by members of the era's avant-garde art scene (including one or two who tempt O'Keeffe to turn tables on Stieglitz). In the end, it's not fidelity she craves but space to make art as she did when she was "nobody": "This is, after all, what I learned from [Stieglitz]: to keep what I want to myself. To reveal only what I want to be seen." A year before the centennial of that first one-woman show, Tripp's portrait makes a compelling primer to O'Keeffe's early career--and, yes, more than a love story.
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January 1, 2016
This fictionalized biography of one of the best-known artists of the last century begins with Georgia O'Keeffe as a young woman teaching in Texas. When her sketches make their way to Alfred Stieglitz, photographer and gallery owner in New York, the two meet, and their passion is undeniable. They become lovers, and Stieglitz encourages O'Keeffe to develop her artistry, but she also becomes the inspiration for his work. When Stieglitz shows his nude portraits of her, Georgia is launched into the spotlight overnight. It is a defining moment for them both, one that Georgia repeatedly reevaluates as she fights to distance herself from the woman in the photographs and have her painting recognized for its artistry, not its femininity. Details from letters and other writings are the backbone of this powerful interpretation of the artist's personal growth throughout her relationship with Stieglitz. As vibrant and colorful as one would hope for a story about this beloved artist, Tripp's novel clearly takes liberties, but the relative truth painted with them is well worth the straying.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)