Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Here is a brief, intelligent, and authoritatively evenhanded analytical account of the artistic origins and development of Georgia O'Keeffe. There is an astonishing amount of new information here, especially in less well documented topics. The book reflects O'Keeffe's powerful theoretical intelligence--one informed by a lived sense of social realities--and explores the complex, ambiguous, and often contradictory relationship between New England landscape painting and the socioeconomic changes that accompanied the move to New Mexico. Messinger compellingly evokes a milieu of burning ambition, provincial naivete, and leapfrogging inspiration. She assesses O'Keeffe's works as a whole, with particular emphasis on the subject matter, and finds them to be stylistically and iconographically coherent. This important and provocative book, with its historical perspective, complements the sumptuous and more intimate Georgia O'Keeffe by Georgia O'Keeffe (CH, Apr '77). Highly recommended. -M. Casas, San Antonio College