"Dearest Duck": 6 Sweet and Smutty Insights From the Love Letters of Georgia OKeeffe and Alfred Stieglitz

With over 800 pages of romance hardbound into an outsize anthology chronicling a long-distance love saga, "My Faraway One, Selected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: Volume I, 1915-1933" is kind of hard to miss at the front of your favorite independent bookstore. And the steamy, deliriously odd missives it contains are hard to forget. In fact, some words, like "fluff," may never revert to their normal meanings for editor Sarah Greenough, who spent years digging through Yale University's Bienecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library to compile some 5,000 letters exchanged between the artists over the length of their four-decade relationship. 

The correspondence guides readers from the first stirrings of the affair at Steiglitz's seminal 291 gallery space in New York, when he was still a married man and she was about to become a teacher in Canyon, Texas, to its torrid end. ARTINFO has soldiered through the book — these two use more dashes than Emily Dickinson! — and picked out some of the spiciest and the sweetest exchanges, as well as some surprising tidbits you wouldn't know otherwise. Fair warning: while Greenough provides a valuable historical lesson here, you might feel like you've accidentally opened the door to your parents' bedroom.

LONG BEFORE STEIGLITZ GOOSED HER, HE GOOSED HER CAREER

O'Keeffe first met Stieglitz in 1915 at 291, where she had come for the John Marin show but left enamored not only of the space and the artists it displayed but the man running it. For the 27-year-old ingenue, the venerable Stieglitz (at 51) was the sage art star she had been searching for. She wrote her first few exchanges to him in formal prose, praising his efforts as a gallerist and asking him politely to review her work. Finally, when Stieglitz did, he was astonished by what he saw and gave O'Keeffe her first show. In a much later letter to her in 1929, he wrote, "I don't need to see the painting itself—for I know what it looks like. Georgia.—" 

As their relationship and O'Keeffe's career matured, Stieglitz continued to promote her work, showing it to other important artists of the period and exhibiting it in his gallery. In 1922, Marcel Duchamp paid Stieglitz a visit. As the gallerist wrote to O'Keeffe, "Duchamp—He came up & stayed with me till six—I always like him. So clean cut. —Says Man Ray likes it in Paris.—Photographs for a living!!—He, Duchamp, gives French lessons to live. Is finishing the glass painting. We must go & see it. —He liked the portrait (corncob) of you. Also some of others.—Looked at your paintings. Some. And Marin's...." 

HOT, UNFETTERED SEX TURNED THEM ON... AS ARTISTS

The couple waited about four years before consummating their relationship, but when they finally got busy it not only changed them personally, but affected their art work. Following a trip to Maine, O'Keeffe wrote, "I am on my back—wanting to be spread wide apart—waiting for you—to die with the sense of you—the pleasure of you—the sensuousness of you touching the sensuousness of me—" Yow. Given the long distance nature of their courtship, which continued even after their marriage, many of their letters read like more eloquent stanzas from the inside of late-night Internet chat room. "Dearest—my body is simply crazy with wanting you—If you don't come tomorrow—I don't see how I can wait for you—I wonder if your body wants mine the way mine wants yours—the kisses—the hotness—the wetness—all melting together—the being held so tight that it hurts—the strangle and the struggle," O'Keeffe wrote to her lover in New York. You get the idea. 

Starting then, O'Keeffe began making dozens of paintings, the subject matter exploring new subjects like the clouds and later and most recognizably, flora and fauna. Stieglitz also embraced natural subjects more than ever, and O'Keeffe became his photographic muse. He writes, "—How I wanted to photograph you—the hands—the mouth—& eyes—& the enveloped inblack body—the touch of white—& the throat—" In their raunchy exchanges, O'Keeffe's language mirrored her floral paintings, describing the folds and textures of her most intimate parts with the same vivacity she eventually poured on canvas. 

THEIR TERMS OF ENDEARMENT WERE UNCONVENTIONAL

As their relationship progressed and became more romantic, the pair developed an extensive lexicon of nicknames for one another. Early in their courtship, Steiglitz affectionately referred to O'Keeffe as his "little girl," and he fully embraced the paternal role of mentor for the first several years, encouraging her artistic endeavors in Texas and asking her to send him drawings. "Dearest Duck—I seem to like to address you as Dearest Duck—I wonder why—another of my questions—" wrote O'Keeffe in one of her letters. She also referred to Stieglitz as "Dead Duck" and "Little Boy" over the years, while he wrote to her as "Dearest Sweetest White One" and "Faraway Nearest One." Despite being the younger, O'Keeffe regarded Stieglitz as fragile and gained the role of nurturer both in and outside the bedroom. In one letter, she described cradling him in post-coital relaxation: her "Little Baby." Slightly uncomfortable for those not involved. 

One raunchy nickname Stieglitz did have for O'Keeffe early in their romance was "Fluffy," or "Miss Fluffy." Doesn't sound too naughty? That was actually his term for her vagina. "Fluffing," meanwhile, was used to denote sex. (How this term relates to the "fluffers" of contemporary pornography is a question for future art historians.) He writes, in a moment of self-doubt and apology following a period of turmoil and physical separation in their relationship, "I could have fluffed you to death—you were ready for it—Hadn't I realized a greater value in you than fluffer!—I often told you so. —And I could have fluffed myself to death. —Maybe fluffing you to death and myself too might have been wiser."

WHAT DIDN'T HAPPEN BETWEEN THE SHEETS WENT ON THE CANVAS

Stieglitz and O'Keeffe were not only lovers, they were also each others greatest fans, critics, and muses. O'Keeffe looked to Stieglitz for artistic guidance. His art world connections for her were invaluable, and as they spent much time apart on opposite ends of the country O'Keeffe continued to nurture this relationship by sending him work. While staying in Maine she wrote him, "Don't expect too much of my pastels—I am stacking them in a pile on my closet shelf—but I guess they aren't much—just some foolishness—" In the thousands of letters sent between the lovers, parts of their artistic process come to light. The two would review each other's work, exchanged by post, and divulge the musings of projects-to-be. O'Keeffe wrote, "I am beginning to feel that I might be interested in painting—There are all sorts of things in my head but it's too late now—I'll do the best I can with the pastels—I can manage very well—I like them too because they go very fast and I can leave them at anytime—I guess the reason why I like oils is that they seem more definite—"

THEY SAW THE WORLD DIFFERENTLY, BUT IN HARMONY

Greenough, whose day job is senior curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art in D.C., singles out an exchange from September 25, 1923, to show how Stieglitz and O'Keeffe's artistic temperaments diverged. As both artists write about staring up at the moonlight sky, their prose goes in two different directions, one filled with color and sentiment and the other laden with black and white analysis. Greenough says, "You see very clearly how Stieglitz saw it as a photographer, in black and white and how he interpreted the symbolic, even metaphysical significance of the scene, while O'Keeffe saw it as a painter, in color, and liked it to the union of a man and a woman. And you see so clearly how profoundly they were moved by the natural environment." 

LONG DISTANCE BROUGHT THEM CLOSER

While the artists couldn't put their appreciation of one another on paper fast enough — with letters flying back and forth at an exponential rate, claiming transcontinental declarations of love, longing and respect — the two suffered the trials of marriage as many do. Stieglitz's unfortunate wandering eyes led him once again to a love affair with a much younger woman, Dorothy Norman, after marrying O'Keeffe in 1924. O'Keeffe was not without her own transgressions, too. But caring for Stieglitz's hypochondriac tendencies in Lake George, and her own longing for a family, left her unfulfilled. Her escape to New Mexico proved historically to be wise for both her marriage and her artistic endeavors, as the iconic cow skulls and Southwest skyscapes are a product of this period. Stieglitz supported her travels, as much as it pained him to have his muse gone. He described in later letters his pleasure at knowing that space is what she truly needed for happiness. 

Their affair, while messy and overflowing with sentiment, is neatly packed in Greenough's massive book, although finishing it may only be for the strong-willed or the professionally prurient. But aside from their boiling physical chemistry, the two shared a tender, moving romane that can be found in the letters. "I love you, Dearest One, if I am capable of love. I often wonder, am I?—But if I am, it's you there with me in the great white stillness—where there is a great peace & no ugliness.—No voices with edges that tear—"