cover image Painting with O'Keeffe

Painting with O'Keeffe

John Poling. Texas Tech University Press, $24.95 (184pp) ISBN 978-0-89672-381-8

A former handyman to Georgia O'Keeffe, Poling cannot get the legendary artist out of his system, as this self-serving memoir attests. In 1976, while painting the trim of O'Keeffe's house in New Mexico, Poling spent five days applying paint to one of her canvases in colors, to areas and in techniques--including the type of brushstroke and thickness of paint--of her choosing. Later that fall, the 89-year-old O'Keeffe, who had lost her central vision to macular degeneration, asked him to do the same for two more works. As a result of this brief association (O'Keeffe later said that he functioned as a palette knife), Poling has repeatedly and publicly claimed that he and O'Keeffe collaborated on these works, insisting that ""a footnote or paragraph clarifying a collaboration was a necessary piece of information"" for dealers, private owners and the viewing public. This memoir is comprised largely of incidents that Poling first described to a newspaper reporter in 1980. The final chapter--in which Poling awkwardly asks, ""What is art of?""--pays tribute to O'Keeffe by closely examining a few of her canvases. But Poling adds nothing to the portrait biographers have drawn of the vigorous and determined woman he was fortunate to meet and very little to what is known of O'Keeffe's working habits. One hopes that, with this book behind him, Poling, who is now a professor, may finally let his unconvincing case rest. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Sept.)