Portrait of an Artist, Laurie Lisle
Portrait of an Artist, Laurie Lisle
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Portrait of an Artist
A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe

Author: Laurie Lisle

Narrator: Grace Conlin

Unabridged: 13 hr 38 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/01/2007

Synopsis

Georgia O'Keeffe was one of the most original painters America has ever produced. Her vivid visual vocabulary—sensuous flowers, bleached bones against red sky and earth—has had a profound and lasting influence on American art in this century.Renowned for her fierce independence, iron determination, and unique artistic vision, O'Keeffe had a personal mystique as intriguing and enduring as her bold, brilliant canvasses. Here is a full account of her exceptional life—from her girlhood and early days as a controversial art teacher, to her discovery by the pioneering photographer of the New York avant-garde Alfred Stieglitz, to her seclusion in the New Mexico desert, where she lived until her death. Here also is the story of a great romance—between the extraordinary painter and her much older mentor, lover, and husband, Stieglitz.

About Laurie Lisle

Laurie Lisle is the author of Without Child: Challenging the Stigma of Childlessness and Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life. She lectures widely on O’Keeffe and writes essays, articles, and book reviews for various publications. She lives with her husband in northwestern Connecticut and Westchester County, New York.

About Grace Conlin

Grace Conlin (1962–1997) was the recording name of Grainne Cassidy, an award-winning actress and acclaimed narrator. She was a member of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC, and won a Helen Hayes Award in 1988 for her role in Woolly Mammoth’s production of Savage in Limbo.

Reviews

Goodreads review by William2

I'm no great reader of biographies. I tend to find them lackluster with their cradle-to-grave narrative arc and cheap psychologizing. But this particular work is terrific. It's insightful. We see how Georgia O'Keeffe's talent developed early in life. In 1903-04 Georgia and her many sisters were driv......more

Goodreads review by Kevin

O’Keeffe was the consummate “artist” and any characterization could easily have been stiff and stereotypical, but not here. Lisle, more often than not, was able to pry open that guarded, introverted, almost misanthropic oyster that was Georgia O’Keeffe and gift us all with a fleeting glimpse of the......more

Goodreads review by Lin

This is one of the two biographies recommended to docents at the O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe--the less technical one, according to the gift shop assistant who helped me select one. I chose "less technical" because I wanted a fast read--and it was, because Georgia O'Keeffe was such an interesting per......more

Goodreads review by Claire

I read this book a long time ago, after first seeing some of the works of Georgia O'Keefe at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. I remember it being a wonderful feeling, something in her paintings resonated at a deep level, I didn't understand it, but I felt it and thus began a curious explor......more

Quotes

“What a personality emerges from these pages! Lisle provides us with fascinating details of the sort that immediately give life to her subject…Portrait of an Artist is filled with riches, and nearly every remark of Georgia O’Keeffe’s is worth recording.” Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times bestselling author

“Portrait of an Artist is a sensitive and beautifully documented biography. It moved me deeply—I can’t remember when a book involved me so totally.” Patricia Bosworth, New York Times bestselling author

“Laurie Lisle has given us a mortal Georgia O’Keeffe, whose human hunger and frailties, gifts and strengths, enabled her to survive—triumphantly—a conflicted life. Many readers will draw encouragement and even inspiration from this portrait.” Eleanor Munro, author of Originals: American Women Artists

“An excellent portrait of a nearly legendary figure.” San Francisco Chronicle

“Readers will welcome what Lisle has found. The woman who emerges has extraordinary personal stature, artistic gifts, commitment to her vision.”
Chicago Tribune

“Portrait of an Artist is a superb piece of work in every respect. Not only does it document the full scope to date of this remarkable twentieth century life but it does so directly, simply, and objectively…Clearly journalist Lisle has scooped the art world with an impressive literary debut.” Smithsonian

“Portrait of an Artist is in many ways a remarkably informative book. Through interviews with O’Keeffe’s friends and acquaintances, by delving into the published an unpublished sources and letters, Lisle has created a vivid and sensitive portrait of O’Keeffe as an artist and woman…she gives a fine and poignant accounting of the relationship between O’Keeffe and Stieglitz…Above and beyond the personal portrait, Lisle’s biography is a marvelous evocation of the American places that have been important in the development of O’Keeffe’s character and her art.” Saturday Review

“This O’Keeffe will shock as much as amuse, chill as much as inspire.” Christian Science Monitor

“Portrait of an Artist is the most comprehensive biography of Georgia O’Keeffe to date. Her life story, that of a pioneer in the modernist movement, an independent woman in a prefeminist age, and the true peer of her life partner, is remarkable. And art critic Laurie Lisle tells it ably.” Goodreads.com

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