O'Keefe: The Life of an American Legend

By Jeffrey Hogrefe

Georgia O'Keeffe's elegant life has the quality of a legend. She was a pioneer who built her own house in the desert; she was a wife to famous photographer Alfred Stieglitz; she was a woman more comfortable living with nature than people. Voted one of the twelve outstanding women along with Eleanor Roosevelt and Helen Keller in the Thirties, she was indeed the timeless beauty whom Vogue looked to in the Sixties.O'Keeffe is the richly detailed biography that illuminates parts of the mystery and intrigue that surround Georgia O'Keeffe. Author and former journalist Hogrefe interviewed her family and friends and, for the very first time, interviewed her heir and companion, Juan Hamilton, who speaks openly about O'Keeffe's last fifteen years. This is not a love letter to Georgia O'Keeffe; it is her true story, documenting her acerbic personality, her unconventional lifestyle, and her struggles as both an artist and a woman.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0553081160
• ISBN13: 9780553081169
• Release Date: August 1992
• Publisher: Bantam Books
• Length: 376 Pages
• Weight: 1.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

The most Insightful of the O'Keefe Biographies

My wife and I have read three great biographies of O'Keefe, but this is the only one that really gets inside the heads of Georgia, Alfred, and many of her friends. I believe fully in this book's credibility, and with it you will learn countless personal things about O'Keefe that are filtered out in the other biographies, all of which seem to have been written more to please her family. While she isn't always presented in a favorable light in this one, you will appreciate her even more as an astonishingly original individual by reading this version of her magnificent life.

Was Georgia really so bad?

It's incredible how much less fun a biography is to read when the author seems to hate his or her subject. Why would they choose to spend hours and hours of research on somebody if they don't think that the person is worth it? It must be some sort of competition. I found myself frequently thinking back to the Frida Kahlo bio written by Hayden Herrera. In that, the biographer's admiration for the artist was infectious, and was based on her body of work, which was illustrated throughout the book. But in this case, there are hardly any reproductions, because the writer concentrates on gossip and O'keeffe's shortcomings. However, the biography is very thorough and addictive in a guilty pleasure sort of way.