Reading about those one admires can, at times, be dangerous to the pedestal you have placed them on. Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz have long been two of my favorite photographers, although to be honest, I frequently confuse their work, especially their depictions of New York. Georgia O'Keeffe is one of the brightest stars in America's artistic firmament. Rebecca Salsbury, the fourth member of the cast, was entirely unknown to me before reading Foursome, Carolyn Burke's account of the lives of the quartet. Burke's recounting of their work and lives together is engaging, warm, and works hard to look at each of the individual artist's perspective. But life is a messy adventure that is rarely concluded unmussed.

Paul Strand's embrace of communism, even after the world saw the Lenin, Stalin, Mao totalitarian waltz, is troubling and head-scratching but does not change the majesty of his work.

Dr. Phil might be willing to offer a diagnostic guess to the behavior of someone he has not met. I don't feel comfortable doing so, especially if that someone I've never met died before my parents graduated kindergarten. That being said, the life of Alfred Stieglitz could easily be an early snapshot of sex addiction. Although to be fair, he could be your garden variety, misogynistic cad.

But for me, the bloom has been slapped off the Georgia O'Keeffe flower by her own hand. After Alfred and Georgia were married, some of his family came for a summertime visit. One young girl skipped up excitedly and said hello to her, "Aunt Georgia." O'Keeffe slapped the child and told the girl, "Never call me "Aunt Georgia" again." Obviously, this doesn't change a single brilliant brushstroke of her work. However, it creates such darkness around her that her art becomes very hard to see. ( )

Why this book? Saw it in passing on a new book shelf. And thought it would be good to know more than I did about O'Keefe. I discovered O'Keefe in my mid-twenties, when I started paying a bit of attention to art.

I learned quite a bit about these four people, as well as their relationships, although the writing kept me at a distance – it was writing about them, rather than writing that got in their heads, or humanized them. Perhaps a biography or examination of O'Keefe's and Steiglitz' letters to each other would do that, or not, depending on the writer.

The relationships among these four people were complicated; they both learned and grew from each other and hurt each other. Though the author never says why she chose to write this book, I think it would be difficult to get a full picture of each individual artist without being aware of and having some understanding of their relationships. ( )

I was provided a review copy of this from the publisher through First to Read. I admit unfamiliarity with three of the foursome, though I recognize Strand and of course, O’Keeffe (I got to see an exhibition of some if her works in Oklahoma some 30 years ago, too young to truly appreciate them) and I didn’t make many notes in this reading... just absorbed. There are intimate stories here. I do not know how much is known already to students of these four, but I suspect - obviously, as the book had to be written - that having them all together is new, and perhaps unknown.

More than a telling of their stories, Ms. Burke also frames the times that shaped them, shaped their arts. New arts to the world, new visions, self discovery and explorations. One of the things I appreciate about Ms. Burke’s exposition and sometime dramatization is that she qualifies any speculation; if she found no evidence to support suspected relationships, interactions, she doesn’t embellish. Or at least those parts of her narrative where she caveats “tempting to think ... but impossible to know" would indicate.

We tend to think in two dimensions, and might think of a "foursome" as a rectangle/quadrangle, but they were rather a tetrahedron, with Steiglitz at the apex for most of their relationships. O'Keeffe eclipsed him in fame and ascended to that apex, but his ... seniority ... tended to prevail. This is not to say that any of the other three were not their own people, individual and distinct. Clearly, they were, but he was the progenitor of that foursome. They fed off of each other. Built. And also held each other at bay. To preserve their individuality.

This is about the people, and much less their arts, which serve to support here but not stand center. So what do I take away? Well, I looked up Salsbury's reverse oils on glass, and Stieglitz's and Strand's photographs. And I revisited O'Keeffe. And I have things to think about.
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