Painter Georgia O'Keefe Lived with Intermittent Depression

Painter Georgia O'Keefe (1887-1986) lived with depression throughout her long life. Born in Sun Prairie Wisconsin, she is considered one of the master's of 20th Century modernism; A pioneer for women in art. She is probably the best known female American artist of the twentieth century. She carved out her own style apart from the chaos in modernist abstractionist painting and lived her life on her own terms. She paved the way for women artists (along with some others like Alice Neel.)

 She spent much time in New York with her husband, photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz in the early stages of her career. She left for the sunshine of New Mexico in 1929 and made that her home. Known for abstract flowers and bleached cattle skulls in her work (did she know they would be part of a twenty-first design craze?)  She lived in the kind of adobe house that your picture when you think of Santa Fe and set up her studio there. Often painting outdoors and laying under her car to get a break from the sun. She considered it "her country." 

She went to the desert to be alone. She did what she wanted and sometimes traveled the world with her young assistant Juan Hamilton. The influence of Hamilton over her is  somewhat ambiguous.

Stieglitz promoted her works in his 291 Gallery in Manhattan .Her work was far outside the mainstream. She took in a poor local  boy and raised him. I hesitate to bring up Stieglitz's role in giving her art exposure because of the belief by some that she and other prominent women artists namely, Frido Kahlo became household names due to the influence granted by marrying famous husbands. They had the talent and the talent for self promotion within themselves.

O'Keefe's goal was to live to one hundred and she damn near made it. How could someone who battled depression want to live to be that old? I think about the aches and pains I have now let alone the aches and pains in my mind. It says a lot about her spirit and resilience to start over in a new place, knowing no one and just keep on keeping on. I really admire her determination. Does living so long make you accustomed to managing your nerves and your fears? I can't say if it's a goal of mine to live to that long. I had a parent die in middle age and one that has lived into decrepitude.

 O'Keefe was almost completely blind and very deaf in old age. If there's one thing that stays in my mind even during episodes of dysthymia, that thing is doom. This was the title of a friend's show and of one of her works in her show; "The More You Live, The Less You Die."  I'm going to repeat if only for myself-  THE MORE YOU LIVE THE LESS YOU DIE>

 I would never say some BS like "and you can do it too!" Everything comes to an end. I hate it when people tell me that kind of tripe. "You don't know me I want to shout "You don't know what my depression feels like, what the chaos in my head feels like. How I manage my feelings."

Much of the time it feels like being locked in a cold, damp room with black-out drapes on the windows only to part them every time of day, seeing the sunlight slipping down into the horizon and knowing that another day went by and you didn't get anything done,.Feeling already partially buried like a wet, cold dirt sandwich. And wondering "what do I need? What is my gonna be my bottom line today? How can I get what I need? Will the darkness and chaos ever go away? Will I ever feel like my old self? Do I remember what my old life felt like? What can I sell to get money to eat this time, and keep a roof over my head: my vintage clothes, the better books on my shelves? My hair, my plasma? My Mother's things? Cause I just gotta get what I need!"

So many days of my life I wake up and think this is the day. This will be the day I change my life. Start something, find a job again, learn the guitar, find twenty dollars on the street or meet a new best friend? And then that day passes. Again.

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 Several years ago I went to a writer's reading  for a class at the old Amazon bookstore in Minneapolis that was woman run and is sorely missed. Amazon ( yes that Amazon) started up and demanded they give up their name and the store went broke trying to fight them. You try to stand up to Jeff Bezos and you're not going to win.

 I went to hear queer disability activist and writer Eli Clare read from their book "Exile and Pride" and then take questions. It was an author's reading that has stuck in my mind  ever since and I've been to several readings.

 Clare described the "Super Crips" as examples of disabled people who overcame the odds and obstacles and made something of their lives damnit! (And you can too with enough hard work and determination and spunk!)  "I hate spunk!"  Lou Grant says to Mary on the first episode of The Nary Tyler Moore Show. These "Super Crips" are held up as a mirror to the rest of us, These standard bearers for other disabled people so they feel worse about not accomplishing what these people did. And to be fair the "super crips" themselves are being used by a system of judgement and promotion.

It then dawned on me that there are the "super loons" too. People with a mental illness that overcame great obstacles and got a PhD in Neurobiology from Harvard and now run marathons.  They too give the impression to the rest of us loons "look, I made it so you can too!" Just as the non-disabled (for now) American masses have always judged us. American culture is built on envy, shame, belittlement. The continuous holding up of  shining examples of the ones who've "made it." 

 I read "Unquiet Mind" by Kay Redfileld Jamison this year and while I don't want to unfairly judge a woman I don't know-  (well, here it comes anyway!)  Everyone told me "you must read this book! It's so good!" So I read it and I made it to the end but then I wanted to rip it to shreds and hurl it across the room. "How has your life been so hard Kay? Fuck you Kay you fake loon!" I wanted to shout."You've had all the breaks. You had a steady income, respect and admiration from your peers, fallen in love with interesting, men and lived in London,\You didn't have a family member die young and tragically or at least not then and you get to teach at Johns Hopkins Medical School? Tell me please how has your depression and anxiety and bi-polar held you back from anything?" Is this a paradox of people with mental illness? Divide and conquer? Separate and blame? Am I perpetuating this paradigm myself?

Can one be a success and see a psychiatrist or a therapist for years? Okay. decades. Can you know what it's like to scramble and hustle every day to keep the wolf from the door and move on from there? Are you really mentally ill or an artist for that matter if you've ever lived someplace with weekly resident meetings and a chore list? I don't know.

And I don't know this woman. I don't live in her head but why does it seem she'd written this book to reveal her success? To say that I also was bat shit crazy and I made it! (I don't much like the c- word.) And so can I if you put I put  unquiet mind to it? I only know how I live in  my own head.  I just wish other people had not coerced me into reading it because- "really Kay you seem to have had A LOT of breaks but you are not my gold standard. I'll concede that she did have to deal with the embarrassment of colleagues finding out about her condition in a less forgiving time. But then she had people come to her rescue. What is authentically crazy?

What is one of the worst things you can say about somebody to destroy their reputation? It's not "they're gay. It's not they're cheap. It's saying they've been in a psych ward.

And then I thought as I've thought throughout my  adult life "Yeah- well if got up off my ass I could write a better book than that or do a better whatever....So I started this blog to talk about how convicts have more rights than people with a mental illness diagnosis. And please don't say suffer. Do we say people are suffering with HIV and suffering from cancer? No we don't. 

So if by the world's standards we become successful did we conquer our demons or hold them in check? Did we make art because of our darkness or did our art carry us out of our darkness? Were we really ever that sick?  Does suffering help make a genius or a great artist? No I don't think so in the same way that having money doesn't take away your problems or in the way that people who live through horrific things don't always come out the other end wise and thoughtful.

 Did Georgia O'Keefe make better art because she knew about what it felt like to not be able to pull herself out of it? Did people ever say to her "hey girl- you can do it!" or did they probably say probably that you should do what your husband wants. More likely they also told her to stay with her man and that no one cares about women's art that didn't sell anyway.

We remember Sylvia Plath, Van Gogh and John Berryman who couldn't stand it anymore .And I think looking at it as giving up is a mistake. We don't know what was in their minds.What the voices were like inside them. Even if you don't think you hear voices you hear your voice, your doubts. Why don't we know more about Georgia O'Keefe with her ability to keep on keeping on?

Eli Clare's books include "Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation and "Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure"