Stieglitz: A Memoir/Biography
by Sue Davidson Lowe, Anne Havinga, Arthur Dove, Georgia O'Keeffe, Mark Strand, Marsden Hartley
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Book Summary Information
Author: Anne Havinga, Arthur Dove, Georgia O'Keeffe, Mark Strand, Marsden Hartley, Sue Davidson LoweEditor: Edward Steichen
Photographer: Alfred Stieglitz
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-10-15
ISBN: 0878466495
Number of pages: 512
Publisher: MFA Publications
Book Reviews of Stieglitz: A Memoir/Biography
Book Review: a thoroughly nuanced account of a problematic figure
Summary: 5 Stars
My interest in this biography was piqued by my mounting scepticism of the claims of early 20th century modernist artists and their promoters, whether critics, collectors or curators. Much of what we think we know about early American modernism is little more than oft repeated hand-me-down information that manifests the bearer's uncritical satisfaction with the modernist enterprise. Such information serves to maintain the artist's place in the modernist temple that subsequent enthusiasts and fans have constructed and served as keepers of the flame. Critical, layered and thorough historical study reveals such notions as ideology, mere mythologizing constructs.
Readers of Ms. Lowe's exceptionally well written biography will find a fair and balanced AND critically engaged account of an adequately talented photographer who was one of the principal apologists of modernist ideas in New York, with a reputation in Europe as well. With his small enclosed (are modernist gatherings ever open?) circle of artists and holding court in his galleries, Alfred Stieglitz combatively denounced skeptical visitors who didn't or wouldn't "get it." This was was the Stieglitzian modernist "my way or the highway" pronouncement which cowed fawning acolytes.
A vorcious AND impressionable reader, he embraced Freudian ideas subsequently discredited in the later 20th century. Believing in the "pure artist untainted by commerce,Stieglitz turned against his young associate Edward Steichen when the latter became successful as an artistic commercial photographer (his career was also characterized by attracting the public; Stieglitz's publications always shed their subscribers who got fed-up with his sermonizing enthusiasms that strayed from photographic matters) Mind you, Steichen accomplished a multi-faceted career without "daddy's money," with which Stieglitz was bankrolled for much of his bohemian life (danke, PaPa!). He seems to also have been his mother's favorite.
Among the book's strong sections are its coverage of the regular gatherings of the Stieglitz clan at the family's summer house in upstate New York. Here family dynamics were played out that revealingly throw Stieglitz's personality into contrast with those of his siblings, friends and younger lover Georgia O'Keefe (one of the more over-rated American artists of the 20th century) who also shared his inflexible termperament.
The author, who spent years meticulously researching available archives (some still remain sealed), has produced a fully-orbed account of the glories and contradictions of an archetypal American modernist. It is a definitive study of Steiglitz and his personal world.
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