Review: Georgia, by Dawn Tripp

Georgia focuses on the period in the artist’s life when she was in relationship with Alfred Stieglitz. When the photographer first encourages Georgia O’Keeffe and begins courting her via letters from New York, she is overwhelmed. She tries to take it in during sojourns through the Texas night:

“I lie there in the cold quiet, a small though moving at the edges of my mind-

the possibility that he is like that open space, vast like these plains, this night,

vast enough it seems sometimes to hold me.”

            Georgia joins Stieglitz in New York, where he makes a series of nude photographs of her. She’s unself-conscious about them, as they portray someone so beautiful that she speaks of the woman in the photographs in the third person. When Georgia begins to show her work in Stieglitz’s avant-garde art gallery, the public is already familiar with her through the nudes. Every critic references them. The series of giant flower paintings she creates only provide the critics with all the more evidence of her “feminine” nature. No wonder Georgia later so vehemently denied feminists’ interpretation of her flower shapes as vaginal!

            In response, Georgia returns to the hard, abstract style she originated in Texas. But Stieglitz advises against painting in this style. He won’t show the abstracts or the city paintings Georgia creates from their apartment window.

And he’s controlling in other ways, like dissuading Georgia from having a child. She feels “cut down if I want too much”. Stieglitz loves her, or his idea of her—her new American painting, her clarity and strength—so much so that he cannot bear for her to go on painting trips on her own. Yet Georgia can’t bear to be constantly contained.

            When Georgia’s independence is too much for him, Stieglitz is unfaithful. After his third affair, Georgia travels to Taos, New Mexico. It’s reminiscent of Texas, and she begins to remember who she was before she met Stieglitz. “Curious, how something as inarguable and simple as wide-open space can rearrange me back into myself,” she thinks. And “…For the first time in a dozen years, it occurs to me that perhaps Stieglitz is not my life, but a detour from it.” Still, Georgia returns to Stieglitz again and again, until the psychic contortions required to fit his image of who she is result in a crisis that convinces her return to Taos.

                                   

            The author’s lyrical writing matches Georgia’s paintings. Her grasp of Georgia’s character and how it intersects with Stieglitz’s feel utterly authentic. And her descriptions of the process of painting give you the vicarious thrill of being in this artist’s head.

                        Day after day, it is the desolation of this country that enthralls

                        me. How the wind sweeps the light and throws it into vibrant

                        shifting patterns of color and shadow against the cliffs…I paint,

                        and I am not the woman that he made.

In the end, only the sky is vast enough to hold Georgia. I wish that every young woman who has been told she is complicated or difficult would read this book to learn that—like Georgia—the truth is that she is powerful.

Soundtrack for La Luministe

To help you enjoy the music I've chosen to accompany my novel about Berthe Morisot, here's some context about each selection. Click the link to go to the Spotify playlist and listen to each: https://open.spotify.com/user/paulabutterfield/playlist/4WXPexpiHJ3U7CSLhzCnfM


1. Tea Picking Dance featuring the koto, a traditional Japanese instrument, signifies the moment when Berthe sees her first Japanese print. The simple image of a woman in the private act of brushing her hair influenced her work ever after.

2. When the Morisot family attends the opening of the opera Don Giovanni, Berthe is absorbed by the story of a father and son who are in love with the same woman. The lyrics to the aria, Non Mi Di Bell'Idol Mio could be describing  Berthe's growing attraction to Edouard Manet.

                                                      I cruel?
                                                      Ah no, my dearest!
                                                      It grieves me much to postpone
                                                      a bliss we have for long desired…

3. Gioachino Rossini, a neighbor of the Morisots, plays Let's Dance at one of the weekly dinner gatherings Cornelie Morisot institutes to find husbands for her daughters.

4. After the German siege of Paris, Berthe goes to Cherbourg to visit her sister, Edma. The combined joys of seeing her sister again and of being away from the deprivations of Paris come through in her exuberant marine paintings. From Dawn Till Noon on the Sea, from Debussy's La Mer, conveys the wind, the waves, and the freedom Berthe enjoys while perched with her easel overlooking a harbor on the northwestern-most tip of Normandy.

5. If Berthe had spoken English, she might have used it on several occasions to tell Edouard Manet You're No Good.

6. It's Berthe's daughter, Julie, who lures her back to painting in the Bos de Boulogne after a period of mourning. There, they come across a concert by Cécile Chaminaud, whose light, charming Etude Symphonique, Opus 28, reminds Berthe of what life has to offer.

7. As Impressionism's popularity wanes, Berthe's friendships with her colleagues grows. She learns that Renoir has a penchant for singing songs from the latest operas, such as this one from Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann.

8. Renoir, Monet and Degas stagger down the sidewalk after one of Berthe's weekly dinners singing songs like Nini Peau de Chien, made popular by café concert crooner Aristide Bruant, extolling the charms of a prostitute.

9. At the end of her life, Julie ponders the nature of the relationship between her mother and Edouard Manet. Julie admires the French chic of the new American First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, so I Loved You in Silence, from Camelot, seems an appropriate song to conclude the soundtrack to La Luministe.

Painting it Forward

                              

         In the past, a woman who wished to be an artist had very little chance of pursuing that goal unless her father was an artist, himself. By the Renaissance, even a non-artist father could help by hiring painting tutors for his daughter, provided he was a Humanist who believed that women were educable.

         In 17^th c. Holland, botanical artist Maria Sibylla Merian learned from her father, an engraver, and her step-father, a Flemish flower painter. Though she was taught via this traditional route, Merian broke the pattern when she taught her daughters (and a maid, by some accounts) to observe and record the natural world. Flower paintings were hugely popular in her time, but Merian’s interest in botany and insects went beyond pretty pictures. After separating from her husband, she and her daughters travelled to the Dutch colony of Surinam in Africa, a dangerous undertaking, to do scientific research that resulted in The New Book of Flowers. For more about Merian and her daughters, here’s an informative blog post:

http://blog.catherinedelors.com/maria-sibylla-merian-and-her-daughters-at-the-crossroads-of-art-and-science/

         A century later in France, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard became one of only two women elected to join the Academy Française. Women during that time had no access to art education, let alone studios or models, so Labille-Guiard took it upon herself to teach promising young women artists in her own studio. It was common for women artists to paint self-portraits showing themselves at their easels, but She recorded this process in her painting, Portrait of the Artist with Two Pupils, Mlle Marie-Gabrielle Capet & Mlle Carraux de Rosemond. Radical as she was in circumventing the Academic system, she was still an 18th c. woman who made sure to show herself and her students to their best advantage. It's doubtful that the artist actually worked dressed in sumptuous silks with diaphanous trim, elaborate hairstyle topped by a feathered hat!  

         Another French artist, Berthe Morisot, took time from exhibiting with the Impressionist painters in the late 19^th c. to teach her daughter Julie and her nieces to draw and paint. Of the group, her niece Paule Gobillard showed the most talent. In these two paintings by Morisot, Paule sits in the same spot in the studio, marked by the classical statue behind her. Two things about that statue: First, it would have stood in for a live model; a nude model was out of the question for women artists. Second, it suggests that Paule, and likely her cousins, had usual spots where they worked in tante Berthe’s studio, which indicates that their art classes were routine.

         It pleased Berthe so much to see her daughter and nieces painting together (no doubt calling up memories of painting with her sister in their youth), that she painted Paule in action. In the unfinished work (lower right), it appears that Berthe hasn’t yet committed to a final position for Paule’s painting arm. The effect is of an arm in motion, caught in the act of painting. (Here’s a video of Paule Gobillard’s paintings throughout her career: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NRMHAL-QaA )

       

           During the 19^th c., segregated art schools for ladies were established, but it wasn’t until well into the 20^th   that women joined men in life-drawing classes in the United States.  

The Museum of Women Impressionists

           I would like to establish a small museum featuring the work of the women 
Impressionists. Berthe Morisot, a founder of the movement, contributed paintings to all 
but one of the exhibitions. Mary Cassatt contributed to four shows, and Marie 
Braquemond’s work appeared in three shows before her husband discouraged her further 
involvement with the Impressionists. Eva Gonzalès never participated in an Impressionist 
exhibition, but as a protégé of Edouard Manet, her style fit within the parameters of 
Impressionism, so I’m including her work in my museum.

            This imaginary museum is not available to tour via Google Art Project, so you’ll
have to use your imagination. I’ll be your decent as we peruse works by the women of Impressionism that include scenes of daily life, featuring family members and friends. Let’s start in the main gallery with a theme that all four artists interpreted--women reading. These paintings are meant to convey that their subjects are intelligent, educated women--reading the newspaper was thought to be especially significant. The outdoor readers show the Impressionist artists fascination with the effects of natural light. When the content of these roughly-contemporary paintings is similar, the differences in each artist's style becomes clear.

                                                    Woman Reading (Cassatt, 1879)

                                                 Reading in the Forest (Gonzalès, 1879)

                                                   Afternoon Tea (Braquemond, 1880) 

                                                       Reading (Morisot, 1873)

     Morisot and Cassatt were the two most active Impressionist painters, so let’s take a 
look at some of their work in this next room. Morisot was as devoted to her sister, Edma, 
as Cassatt was to her sister, Lydia. That closeness and intimacy can be seen in The Sisters 
(Morisot, 1869) and Two Sisters (Cassatt, 1906). Both feature the accessory du jour—a 
Japanese fan. A difference between the works is that Morisot’s was in oil on canvas, while 
Cassatt’s visible marks were made by pastels. 

                                                                                                                                                                                    


         


                                                                                                                                                                         In Mother and Sister of the Artist (Morisot, 1869) and Portrait of Katherine Kelso Cassatt (1889), the artists portray more family members. Although these women are imposing black, pyramidal figures, both Morisot and Cassatt were devoted to their mothers. Is it any coincidence that Cassatt began her series of famous paintings of mothers and children after her mother died?

    











          Both Summer’s Day (Morisot, 1870) and Summertime (Cassatt, 1894) feature women enjoying boating, probably on the lake in the Bois de Boulogne. You might have noticed that all of these Cassatt works were created 20 years or more after Morisot’s counterparts. Was her scene of ladies at leisure and ducks floating on light-dappled water an homage to her old colleague and competitor?

            In a small side room, we can see comparable works by Morisot and Gonzalès, Getting Out of Bed (1886), and Awakening Girl (s.d.). Where Gonzalès depicts an idealized, soft-focus scene of a sensuous young woman rising lying on a ruffled pillow beneath a diaphanous canopy, Morisot portrays a more innocent looking young girl. 

          And notice the different take on seeing and being seen at the theater in Gonzalès’s Box at the Italian Theater (1874) and Cassatt’s Woman in Black at the Opera (1877-78). We know that Cassatt's woman is attending a matinee, as she wears daytime attire, not an evening gown. It's interesting to note that while she observes the crowd, a gentleman in the background is observing her. Gonzalés's subject has set her opera glasses down for a moment, but her companion is scrutinizing someone outside the frame of the picture.

            An alcove is devoted to Braquemond’s luminous, almost-life-sized masterpiece, On the Terrace (1880), which leaves us wondering how this artist's work would have progressed if she had had the opportunity to continue painting
.

            Marie Braquemond turned her artistic talents to china painting. Gonzalès died of childbirth fever in her 30's. Morisot died at age 54. Cassatt lived the longest, until 1926. She saw WWI and women’s suffrage bring women’s lives out of the domestic sphere. But their work documenting the daily lives of women in the late 19^th c. lives on in the Museum of Women Impressionists.