Georgia O’Keeffe in Texas: A Guide by Paul H. Carlson and John T. Becker (review)

At first glance, this slim volume appears to be a welcome addition to the literature on the much-celebrated American artist Georgia O’Keeffe. With maps, vintage photographs, and lists of Texas museums holding O’Keeffe artworks, the book offers, in the authors’ words, “something of a guide.”

The text begins with a well-written, succinct biographical essay, which inevitably rehearses information familiar to many readers. But the biography also brings attention to the High Plains, specifically the Texas Panhandle region known as Llano Estacado, as the setting for and a source of O’Keeffe’s art. The authors delve into the geological history, geography, and ecology of this region. They suggest, convincingly, that when O’Keeffe stepped off the train in Amarillo in 1912, the Llano Estacado looked much like it did 12,000 years earlier when the first humans arrived. These sections are informative and engaging; unfortunately, this cannot be said of the remainder of the book.

Organizational arrangement and art historical inaccuracies undercut the guide’s usefulness. For instance, the account of the Canyon Suite paintings would have been more effective if placed after the Ted Reid section. The division of the text into the short sections that follow the biographical and Panhandle portions results in unwarranted repetition of information. This distraction might have been avoided by incorporating the individual textual segments into a single, fluid narrative. The inclusion and placement of John F. Matthews’s essay on the influence of the Texas Panhandle on O’Keeffe’s art (originally published in 1983 but revised here) is problematic in that it produces a sense of déjà vu, as previous sections have already drawn upon Matthews’s insights.

Besides the book’s organization weakening its coherency, several questionable or incorrect art-related descriptions and comments detract from its reliability—for instance, the claim that Alfred Stieglitz brought some of the first European modernist art, specifically that by Auguste Rodin and Claude Monet, to the United States in 1917. Stieglitz’s “291” gallery began exhibiting such art in 1908, and apparently never showed work by Monet. Other factual errors concerning art and artists undermine the guide’s creditability. The lack of reproductions of the artist’s Texas artworks, except on the cover, is a serious drawback to a book about that subject.

Ultimately, what appears initially to be a helpful volume on the art Georgia O’Keeffe produced in Texas turns out to be less than “something of a guide.”