My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: Volume One, 1915-1933
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Yale University Press, in association with the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, recently released My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, Volume One, 1915-1933, a selection of letters from the extraordinary archive of private correspondence between two of America’s most celebrated artists. An important source of information on twentieth-century American art and culture, this monumental project was edited by Sarah Greenough, a leading scholar of the history of photography, who was personally selected by O'Keeffe for this task.
Between 1915, when they first began to write to each other, and 1946, when Stieglitz died, O’Keeffe and Stieglitz exchanged over 5,000 letters (more than 25,000 pages) that describe their daily lives in rich detail. This long-awaited volume featuring some 650 letters, begins with O’Keeffe and Stieglitz’s very first exchange, continues through their marriage in 1924, and ends with their relationship’s near demise in 1933.
In O'Keeffe’s sparse and vibrant style and Stieglitz’s fervent and lyrical manner, the letters describe how they met and fell in love in the 1910s; how they carved out a life together in the 1920s; how their relationship nearly collapsed during the early years of the Depression; and how it was reconstructed in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
At the same time, the correspondence reveals the creative evolution of their art and ideas; their friendships with many of the most influential figures in early American modernism (Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Paul Strand, to name a few); and their relationships and conversations with an exceptionally wide range of key figures in American and European art and culture (including Duncan Phillips, Diego Rivera, D. H. Lawrence, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Marcel Duchamp). Furthermore, their often poignant prose reveals insights into the impact of larger cultural forces—World Wars I and II, the booming economy of the 1920s, the Depression of the 1930s—on two articulate, creative individuals.
Before bequeathing these letters to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 1949, O’Keeffe stipulated that the contents remain sealed until twenty years after her death (in 1986). In 1981, she personally selected Sarah Greenough, a renowned scholar of the history of photography, to edit the correspondence and this is the first time that an annotated selection of these letters appears in print. A subsequent Volume 2 will include correspondence from 1934 to 1946.
SCHEDULE OF RELATED EVENTS:
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, September 18th
Bruce Museum, October 26th
Art Institute of Chicago, November 2nd
Virginia Museum of Fine Art, January 12th
PRAISE:
“Talk about a book bargain! At a time when an ordinary novel might cost $25 or more, you can acquire for just under $40 the intimate correspondence between two of the most important and influential American artists of all time: the great photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) and the arguably even greater painter Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986)…. Human drama — and much else — appears in their letters, but is usefully clarified in the excellent footnotes and interspersed biographical material by editor Sarah Greenough, an authority on the work of Stieglitz and O’Keeffe.” —The Washington Post
"Not just one more big book about the couple. It's a substantial sampling of a huge trove of correspondence that was sealed until 2006, 20 years after O'Keeffe's death, and the first annotated selection of those letters to appear in print….Greenough, a Stieglitz authority and trusted friend of O'Keeffe's, provides the necessary framework for the inevitably fragmentary saga that twists and turns through the letters. With extraordinary insight and a deft touch, she offers historical and social context and examines issues that united and divided two volatile personalities.” —Los Angeles Times
“A compelling text…provide(s) insights and analysis.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
“A love story pitched at the highest romantic level.” —New York Times Book Review
“Greenough, senior curator and head of the department of photographs at the National Gallery
of Art in Washington, D.C., has been immersed in the correspondence between O’Keeffe and Stieglitz for 30 years.” —Pasatiempo
For more information, or to arrange an interview please do not hesitate to contact: Paige Jokl, 203.432.0964 / paige.jokl@yale.edu
My Faraway One: Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: Volume One, 1915-1933, edited by Sarah Greenough
Price: $39.95 * ISBN: 978-0-300-16630-9 Cloth * eBook ISBN: 978-0-300-16644-6 * 832 pages* Publication Date: June 21, 2011
Paige Jokl
Publicist
Yale University Press
(203) 432-0964
paige.jokl@yale.edu
Yale University Press is a premiere scholarly book publisher of art, architecture, business, economics, environmental studies, history, law, literature, philosophy, political science, psychology, reference, religion, science, and world languages titles.
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