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boatingonthehudson.com
I
t was 1924, the heart of the Roaring Twenties
with social changes showing short skirts, women smoking, rampant
sexual adventures, and huge shifts away from Victorian life in America,
that young artist Georgia O’Keefe in her twenties fell in love with, and
married Photographer Edward Steichen (in his fifties). It all happened
on scenic Lake Geroge, New York where they married, lived and loved
a life of art, sex and style that is still legendary in this fast moving time
of instant tweets and short memories.
Now, almost a century later, their Bohemian lifestyle, unusual sex life,
and passionate love, is still remembered, talked about and is recorded
in their daily love letters (sometimes 40 a-day). Articles and books
written about the famous couple continue to fascinate curious people in
and out of the art world.
The electric romance of artist Georgia O’Keefe and Photographer
Edward Steichen still has vitality, still sizzles in the wake of their ‘hot’
love stories, and still thought to be exotic by boaters and vacationers
who come to explore life and love secrets on peaceful Lake George.
The great love legend survived from romantic Adirondack lake George
to New Mexico where O’Keefe settled after Steichen snapped his last
photograph on the lake and died.
The hot romance, love affair, marriage, letters, Steichen (the Rogue)
and his Manage-a-Trois with O’Keefe and Dorothy Norman,
the other young woman, is like “opening the door of your
parent’s bedroom” O’Keefe described being at their home on
the lake.
Their love letters are reported to have bordered on
pornography and O’Keefe’s flower paintings were, by the
artist’s own in those nearly pornographic letters, her own
image of the folds in her private body parts.
Remarkably, all the great Steiglitz wanted to do was to
photograph those private parts--and the artist’s beautiful
hands he adored and admired.
Theirs was a complicated relationship and psychiatrically
speaking, even in the time of Freud, Steiglitz was paternal
in the boudoir, using pet names for O’Keefe’s private parts,
by
Merna Popper
In and About the
Adirondacks
How Deep is Your Love?
“Art also acted as a powerful aphrodisiac”
My Shanty, Lake George
is a 1922 painting by Georgia
O’Keeffe. From 1918 to 1934, Georgia O’Keeffe spent
part of the year at Alfred Stieglitz’s family estate in Lake
George. The depicted shanty was O’Keeffe’s studio,
which was painted in subdued tones in response to
criticism from Stieglitz’ circle—Arthur Dove, John Marin,
Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, and Paul Strand.
O’Keeffe said of the painting: “The clean, clear colors
were in my head, but one day as I looked at the brown
burned wood of the Shanty I thought, “I can paint one
of those dismal-colored paintings like the men. I think
just for fun I will try—all low-toned and dreary with the
tree beside the door.” My Shanty was the first painting by
O’Keeffe purchased by the Duncan Phillips.
and outside the bedroom, she was the dominant nurturer.
Although O’Keefe had studied at The Art Student’s League
in Manhattan, Stieglitz launched her art career with an
exhibition of her art, including Lake George paintings she
made during the summers when they fled the city and took
up residence on the lake.
O’Keefe took up residence in a separate lake cottage where
she was able to find solitude and work. Stieglitz watched over
her adoringly
And together they built their lasting Adirondack life, love
and legend. The simple gentle life on Lake George still
reverberates with the historic passion and artistry these great
lovers left as their legacy to the lake and to Love.
PS A couple I met who vacation every summer on Lake
George, said they take their small rowboat out on the lake
at sunset in search of the O’Keefe-Stieglitz “love vibe” they
still sense beneath the lake’s tranquil surface “even after all
these years”.