Portrait of an Artist by Laurie Lisle

Author:Laurie Lisle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

Nonetheless, a day or two after she had signed the contract, Stieglitz marched into Deskey’s office, explained that he was O’Keeffe’s business manager, and stated that the fee was unacceptable. Deskey replied that the contract was between O’Keeffe and the Music Hall managers, and that she was morally obliged to honor it. Stieglitz left to mull that over, but the next day he returned. As Deskey recalled it, Stieglitz said that O’Keeffe was “a child and not responsible for her actions.” However, since she was extremely eager to do the mural, Stieglitz would allow her to waive the fee—but she must be paid five thousand dollars for expenses. Deskey disregarded Stieglitz’s proposal, and preparations continued for O’Keeffe to paint the powder room.

During the summer of 1932 she made several trips from Lake George to New York to work on her design for the room, which was still under construction. She worried about experimenting so publicly with a mural and about the survival of her work in such a place. At first she was supposed to start work in August, but the room was still unfinished and she anxiously wondered when the canvas would be applied so she could complete her work before the theater opened in late 1932. The powder room contained hundreds of square feet of surface—much of which was on the ceiling and would be physically strenuous to decorate. Originally she had allotted at least ten weeks to do the job.

Finally in November, ignoring Stieglitz’s censorious scowl, Georgia left the lake to start work on the powder room. (One member of the Stieglitz family has said that she departed in spite of Stieglitz’s explicit orders that she bow out of the contract.) A few days later, and only six weeks before the Music Hall was to open on December 27, she went to the finished room with Deskey to inspect its rounded walls, newly covered with canvas. As they stood there, a small section of cloth began to separate from the wall due to defective workmanship. After months of tense waiting, Georgia’s control broke. She became enraged, then hysterical, and ran out of the room in tears, according to Deskey. The next day Stieglitz telephoned him to claim that Georgia had had a nervous breakdown, was confined to a sanatorium and thus was unable to fulfill her contract. Although Georgia was actually back at Lake George, Stieglitz’s intransigent will had prevailed. Deskey quickly arranged for Japanese-born painter Yasuo Kuniyoshi to paint a mural in her stead. Almost as if he were working from O’Keeffe’s sketches, Kuniyoshi painted the room in dreamy gigantic foliage fronds and white flower blossoms.

In early December 1932, a few weeks after her forty-fifth birthday, Georgia returned alone to New York. Tense, drained, and despondent, she suffered from severe headaches and a hypersensitivity to noise. She felt terrified, upon venturing onto the crowded city streets, that she might lose her mind. The doctors who were called in to diagnose the ailment were not sure what was wrong.

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