O'KEEFE : THE LIFE OF AN AMERICAN LEGEND

Rating:
Summary: digs for dirt at the expense of art, but is a fun read
Review: This is a good book, but the author does not seem to like either O-Keeffe or her husband Stieglitz. He covers their art a bit but without enthusiasm and instead seems to target their personal foibles and sexual peccadillos, which were many and indeed strange. This is valid reporting and ceratinly covers a necessary part of the story, but after a while it gets boring. However, in many sections the author speculates in strange ways on details of their intimate life that cannot be known, such as positiing that the origin of O'Keeffe's "discreet lesbianism" came from cryptically documented (hence essentially unprovable) sexual molestation as a child. If you want to look at the art, you have to go elsewhere. I enjoyed this as a vacation book but did not learn much from it beyond gossip.