ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation / Thesis: “LIVING ON PAPER ...

art had been sudden and isolated, with no background to help her comprehend the
unfamiliar images. In 1914 and 1915, O’Keeffe came to exhibitions with friends keenly
interested in modernism. Through her studies with Bement and Martin, discussions with
them and their students, and readings in modernist books and periodicals, O’Keeffe
gained a burgeoning understanding of this new art.
The first exhibition at 291that O’Keeffe recalled attending with Pollitzer and True
was the “Exhibition of Recent Drawings and Paintings by Picasso and by Braque, of
Paris,” on view from December 9, 1914 to January 11, 1915. 23
This was the first
exhibition that Pollitzer had seen at 291 gallery, but she quickly became an enthusiastic
convert to Stieglitz’s ideas. 24
This show, dominated by drawings, continued O’Keeffe’s
graphic exposure to modernism. Charcoal drawings by Picasso proved to O’Keeffe, I
believe, that this traditional academic medium was also suited for avant-garde expression.
O’Keeffe probably saw the Picasso exhibition in December, near the end of her first
semester in New York, since the following October she wrote to Pollitzer about a Picasso
still life drawing of a violin in the exhibition (Fig. 3.18), “It was the first thing I saw at
291 last year . . . and I looked at it a long time but couldn’t get much.” 25
O’Keeffe’s bafflement in late 1914 reflected how new Cubism was to her, and to
her friends, as it was to almost all Americans who encountered it. Although O’Keeffe
would have seen the cubist works reproduced in Eddy’s book and may have read the
convoluted text, the radical concepts were difficult for her to digest. She later
remembered, “It took some time before I really began to use the ideas [that she had read
about modernism].” 26
She already knew enough, however, to be certain that Picasso’s
art was worthy of her attention.
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