[Georgia O’Keefe]

0:00 Intro

0:28 Georgia O’Keefe talks about where the paintings come from “It never occurs to me that they have anything to do with death. They look very lively.”

1:20 Georgia O’Keefe talks about New Mexico. “I shouldn’t say too much about this because other people may become interested. And I don ‘t want them to get interested.” She talks about walking around the desert while walking. She talks about driving in the Model A and working in the back seat. She points out a waterfall on a cliff.

2:58 O’Keefe climbs to her favorite spot and talks about Arthur Peck buying land and coming out to visit him, and moving in. “It was pretty difficult, but I stayed.”

4:30 Juan Hamilton, a companion, talks about Georgia, and Georgia talks about taking him on as an assistant.

5:22 Juan talks about Georgia while working on pottery. They talk about a book that Georgia is working on about her paintings.

6:15 Georgia and Juan talk about paintings to be used for the book.

6:43 Georgia talks about starting to collect bones over older footage of her in the desert and in her studio.

8:00 O’Keefe talks about bringing bones home to Lake George and beginning to paint her first skulls. She says that most men who were trying to make “The Great American Everything…didn’t know anything about America, they had never been across the Hudson.”

9:26 O’Keefe says “The bones do not symbolize death to me. They are shapes that I enjoy.”

9:48 Daniel Catton Rich talks about the death in her paintings. “They outlast death itself.”

10:23 Georgia: “They please me, and I have enjoyed them very much in relation to the sky.”

10:48 Georgia talks about changing colors in her paintings.

11:08 O’Keefe talks about becoming an artist. She says she knew when she was 12 that she wanted to be a painter.

11:55 Juan Hamilton and Georgia talk about her upbringing. Catton Rich talks about the art scene at the time she was in school: either realistic or idealistic. He says that William Merrit Chase was one of her big influences. O’Keefe talks about going to see Rodin at Steiglitz’s gallery.

13:56 O’Keefe talks about deciding to stop painting: she hadn’t been taught any way to paint on her own, and couldn’t paint as well as those she’d been taught to paint like. She talks about learning to paint from other students at the University of Virginia. O’Keefe talks about de ciding to go teach in Texas, and finding the plains beautiful.

16:18 O’Keefe talks about living in Columbia. She talks about Anita Politzer. VO of a letter that O’Keefe wrote to Politzer about her need to work alone. O’Keefe says she didn’t find that any of her paintings had been made to please herself.

18:13 “I don’t remember feeling free or anything like that. I was busy.” O’Keefe talks about making her own charcoal drawings to please herself. O’Keefe talks about sending her paintings to Politzer, who showed her paintings to Stieglitz, who wanted to show them right away.

19 :45 Georgia O’Keefe talks about her anger on Stieglitz putting on a show without her knowledge. She said she couldn’t argue enough to have him take them down.

20:25 V/O: a letter to Anita from Georgia in Texas. She talks happily about having her paints to herself: “I was just as free as a bird. “ She talks about beginning to paint the evening star after walks with her sister.

22:13 O’Keefe talks about painting a small canyon in Texas. Catton Rich talks about the influence of Texas on O ‘Keefe’s work.

22:48 V/O: A letter from O’Keefe to Anita alluding to a budding romantic correspondence with Stieglitz.

23:31 V/O an early, very positive review: “It is only in music that one finds any analogy to the emotional content of these drawings.”

23:45 O’Keefe talks about returning to New York. V/O: another letter. O’Keefe talks about being photographed by Stieglitz.

24:24 VO: Herbert Seligman, an art historian, talking about Stieglitz’s importance as a photographer and gallery owner.

24:00 VO: letter from O’Keefe to Anita about letters from Stieglitz, O’Keefe talks abo ut deciding to go to New York.

25:20 Seligman talks about Stieglitz’s financial support for O’Keefe’s profession as a painter. “Stieglitz made the most complete portrait of O’Keefe as a woman that has ever been made in any medium.” “He photographed my hands, he photographed me “˜til I was crazy.”

27:06 Seligman talks about the relationship between Stieglitz and O’Keefe, bound by their creativity.

28:00 O’Keefe talks about tiring of Lake George. Juan Hamilton talks about the family setting being difficult for Georgia. O’Keefe talks about Lake George difficulties. O’Keefe talks about Lake George.

30:25 Barbara Rose talks about O’Keefe and her relationship with Stieglitz. “There’s nothing like her art, and I think it has to do with her distance from European Tradition.”

31:15 Juan Hamilton and O’Keefe talk about positioning her paintings, which she says can be hung in any direction.

31:55 O’Keefe talks about painting flowers, and painting them larger “so they will have to look at it.”

32:39 O’Keefe talks about the audience’s surprise. Catton Rich examines a few of the flower pantings: “I think they are decorative, but not merely decorative.”



33:50 O’Keefe talks about sexual symbolism in her flowers. “They were talking about their own selves, not me.” She discusses doing paintings in series.

35:05 Barbara Rose talks about O’Keefe as perhaps the only female artist of her generation. O’Keefe says she got along with the men well because she did all the hard work for them. She talks about a circle of students around Stieglitz. “When I say we liked one another, I mean we liked one another’s work, too.”

36:40 Rose and O’Keefe talk about Stieglitz and O’Keefe’s relationship as working because they were so diffe rent. Old videos of Stieglitz and O’Keefe.

37:40 O’Keefe talks about her first New York painting. “I think New York is wonderful, it’s like a dream”¦I think of a city going up, don’t you?” O’Keefe talks about other New York paintings, montage of New York and her paintings. O’Keefe t alks about the reaction to her New York paintings.

39:50 O’Keefe talks about not getting what she wants and her process, and continues talking about her New York work.

41:30 O’Keefe talks about her relationship with Stieglitz. She mentions how Stieglitz would try to discourage buyers from buying her paintings because he wanted to keep them.

42:35 V/O O’Keefe writes a letter unsure of what to paint in Lake George, saying that she again feels at home.

43:27 Hamilton talks about some of O’Keefe’s Taos paintings.

44:00 O’Keefe talks about going to New Mexico despite Stieglitz’s misgivings.

44:30 O’Keefe says she never wanted to paint people. Catton Rich talks about her connection to forms in nature, rather than psychology. He says that you can sense psychology and people even though there are no people in the paintings. Catton Rich and O’Keefe talk about crosses in her pain tings

46:00 Hamilton and O’Keefe walk to a favorite spot, “the black place”. She talks about climbing the hills, and painting in different types of weather. “You look at it, and it’s almost painted for you, you think. Until you try.”

49:30 VO a letter O’Keefe writes talking about Stieg litz growing older. Footage of O’Keefe at work.

50:35 O’Keefe talks about Stieglitz’s death meaning “There was nothing holding me to the big city,” and moving permanently to Taos, and painting her house. “I had to have that door.”

51:55 O’Keefe talks about living alone in Taos.

52:28 Rose dispels the notion of O’Keefe as a recluse, saying her paintings are from travel. O’Keefe talks about her happiness with the spot where she lives.

53:42 Hamilton and O’Keefe talk about the strong youth response to the Whitney retrospective show.

54:15 Rose, Hamilton, and others talk about O’Keefe as a root of minimal and abstract act. O’Keefe talks about enjoying Rothko.

55:45 O’Keefe says, “I can imagine myself being a much better painter, and nobody paying attention to me at all.” She says she has been very lucky.

57:25 End Credits

59:12 END