CLIVE BELL | ART. NEW YORK: (CA. 1913), GEORGIA O'KEEFFE'S COPY, GIVEN TO HER BY ALFRED STIEGLITZ

CLIVE BELL

ART. NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY, (CA. 1916, THIRD EDITION)

8vo (7 1/2 x 5 in.). Half-title, photographic frontispiece and 5 photographic plates. Publisher's brown buckram, printed paper spine label, top edge gilt, Brentano's ticket on rear pastedown.

Georgia O'Keeffe's copy, given to her by Alfred Stieglitz, and signed by her, in pencil, on the front free endpaper: "Georgia O'Keeffe | 291 | Nov. 20—1916." O'Keeffe has also marked sections of nine pages with marginal penciled reader's marks in chapter IV of the text, "The Movement," the three sections of which comprise "The Debt to Cézanne," ""Simplification and Design," and "The Pathetic Fallacy."

O'Keeffe used Bell's Art, together with Arthur Wesley Dow's Theory and Practice of Teaching Art, as a textbook for her course "Methods of Teaching Drawing in the Public Schools" during her time on the faculty at West Texas State Normal College, 1916–1918. She also used it to prepare for a celebrated faculty lecture on "Modern Art" that she delivered in January 1917.

"In this, his most influential book, Clive Bell, … Bloomsbury Group member, advocated the concept that O'Keeffe was so boldly pursuing: that the subject of a painting is subordinate to 'significant form,' in other words, that line and color are the primary conveyors of the emotion of the artist" (The Book Room). 

LITERATURE:

Sarah L. Burt, The Book Room: Georgia O’Keeffe’s Library in Abiquiu, New York, p. 20

PROVENANCE:

Alfred Stieglitz, New York

Georgia O’Keeffe, Abiquiu, New Mexico, 1946 (by descent)

By descent to the present owner