Full Bloom

by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp

  In 1978, after an article on O’Keeffe was published in People magazine, Hamilton was convinced that his relationship with O’Keeffe had started to attract the paparazzi. Bitterly, Hamilton recalled Dan Budnick’s visit. One of the many photographers with whom O’Keeffe was friendly, Budnick arrived at the studio to take pictures of the artist’s hands. During his stay, Budnick made a point of visiting Hamilton’s studio, where he photographed the young man looking cocky and handsome, next to the nun-like O’Keeffe. “I was fairly naive at the time,” Hamilton admitted. “His [Budnick’s] story capitalized on this friendship between an older person and a younger person.”15

  Budnick’s People article set the tone for subsequent articles, many of which suggested the possibility of a May-December wedding. Neither O’Keeffe nor Hamilton denied these rumors. “No comment,” Hamilton told curious reporters. O’Keeffe seemed thrilled by the potential scandal.

  Hearing about the displaced Bry, dealers Robert Miller in New York and Gerald Peters in Santa Fe realized that they had to go through Hamilton to get O’Keeffe’s pictures. Miller and Peters began to exhibit his ovoid ceramic or bronze sculptures.

  In November 1978, celebrities packed Hamilton’s debut exhibition at the Robert Miller Gallery on Fifth Avenue in New York. The swollen bronzes looked elegant in the white gallery with the white floor, and a number of sales were made. The three-dimensional realization of O’Keeffe’s early seventies pictures of black rocks against blue skies, the obsidian ovoids were a form of homage.

  As he stood in the Robert Miller Gallery enjoying his acclaim, Hamilton was served papers by an official from the marshall’s office of the County of New York. It was the lawsuit brought by Doris Bry.

  When Bry countersued for breach of contract, O’Keeffe’s works were legally restricted. Bry simultaneously sued Hamilton in New York State Supreme Court for “malicious interference,” and asked for $13.25 million dollars in damages. In court Bry claimed that O’Keeffe had promised her the role of agent for life, but she was unable to produce any written contract, having taken the artist at her word. As the executrix of O’Keeffe’s 1965 will, Bry thought she had a legal claim to be the artist’s sole agent. The will provided no such security.

  Hamilton defended himself in light of the Bry scandal:

  Miss O’Keeffe was really sorry not to continue with Bry. It’s easy for people to blame that on me or see me as the interloper, but those people are not aware of the strong personality Miss O’Keeffe had. She controlled her world. It is unfortunate but older people who are still involved in their world may change. Just because they have been successful in one way for many years doesn’t mean they can’t rock the boat a little. Instead of retiring, O’Keeffe and I continued to work, to travel, to enjoy the landscape, walk with the dogs, listen to music, work on different projects and defend ourselves. We spent practically six years in the federal courts of New York defending our friendship. My options were simple. Stay with O’Keeffe and defend her and my rights or walk away and give up an incredible opportunity and abandon my best friend. The attack solidified our friendship.16

  During the years of his association with O’Keeffe, Hamilton became friendly with well-known figures in the arts such as cellist YoYo Ma, choreographer Merce Cunningham, composer John Cage, and artists Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol. Fashion designer Calvin Klein not only bought several of O’Keeffe’s paintings, he used Ghost Ranch as the background for his clothing advertisements during the 1980s. When the actor Michael York was performing Cyrano in Santa Fe, his wife, photographer Pat York, befriended Hamilton and met O’Keeffe at a chamber music concert. The artist, who could still see color, admired York’s red cashmere shawl. York immediately tried to give it to her, but O’Keeffe objected, “Darling, I am trying to get rid of everything I own.”17

  In 1978, O’Keeffe celebrated her ninety-first birthday with Ansel Adams and his family. Through the Adamses, she had become friends with architect Nathaniel Owings Sr., founder of the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings, Merrill, and his second wife, Margaret. (Margaret had first met O’Keeffe in 1938 at An American Place, but their friendship blossomed after the artist started visiting Carmel.) O’Keeffe marveled at the Owingses’ concrete A-frame house, which was perched on a rocky promontory in Big Sur overlooking the Pacific. O’Keeffe called it “your house in the clouds above the ocean.” On one visit, Margaret recalled, O’Keeffe “turned to Nat and said, ‘Will you give me this house in your will?’ Then she looked at me, as if to say, I forgot about you, Margaret. I suppose you have to have the house.”18

  Margaret Owings shared O’Keeffe’s keen appreciation of nature. O’Keeffe “loved the sound of the sea lions and seeing them on the rocks below,” Margaret said. “She loved the nest of endangered peregrines and the explosive sounds of the whales breathing.”20 An active supporter of the Environmental Defense Fund, Owings convinced O’Keeffe to donate some two hundred thousand dollars to the cause.

  Hamilton’s birthday, December 23, was celebrated in 1978 in Abiquiu with the Owingses. The painting A Day with Juan had been hung up on the wall. O’Keeffe grilled Nathaniel, “What is that?” When he cited the Washington Monument, she was enormously pleased.

  Margaret Owings was another of Hamilton’s outspoken supporters. “Juan did the greatest thing for Georgia. He made her happy for the last decade of her life. She was in decline and he made her laugh a lot. There was affection and love between Georgia and Juan but they could fight, too. Juan would leave but then he would come back. He had to help her with her clothing but with such gentleness and care. There was romantic play. Juan would say, ‘Georgia and I are going to be married.’ She’d always smile. It pleased her very much. All her wrinkles would go into a big smile and she’d say, ‘Oh, Juan,’ but very coquettish. They weren’t climbing into bed together. But he cared for her in a loving way.”21

  The Owingses kept an adobe in Santa Fe where the architect’s son, Nat Owings Jr., sold O’Keeffe paintings through his gallery, Owings/Dewey Fine Art. When she visited Santa Fe, Margaret Owings was hesitant to call on O’Keeffe too frequently “It made her so mad when people came to see her,” she recalled. “When Walter Mondale was vice president, his wife, Joan, wanted to meet O’Keeffe, so an arrangement was made through connections in D.C. that she should come to the house in Abiquiu. Georgia was annoyed that she was coming. She opened the door and saw Joan Mondale and, behind her, two cars full of other women. It was so inappropriate in Georgia’s eyes. She told the vice president’s wife to come in, greeted her coolly, and the other women were told to go back. She said, ‘Imagine!’

  “Women imagine they’d want her life but few could or would like O’Keeffe’s life for any length of time,” Margaret observed. “The solitude!”22

  Spurred by the lawsuits with Bry, in 1979 O’Keeffe revised her will. She made plans to leave her house in Abiquiu to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Ghost Ranch house was left to Hamilton, who was named executor and given his choice of any six oils and fifteen works on paper. The document released him from any debts to O’Keeffe. In her new will, O’Keeffe listed fifty-two paintings that she wanted to be divided among eight museums: the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, the Cleveland Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The rest of her works were to be given to institutions selected by Hamilton, among them the University of New Mexico, the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, and the Museum of New Mexico.

  There were other surprises in O’Keeffe’s will: her one-time painting student, Jackie Suazo, was allotted thirty thousand dollars, and financial gifts were allotted to many of O’Keeffe’s former employees.

  Since O’Keeffe was nearly blind, her will was read aloud to her, and witnessed by her friends Louise Trigg and Jean Seth, whose husband Oliver was O’Keeffe’s lawyer as well as a federal judge.

  No family member was mentioned in
this or any previous will, though there had been regular contact with various nieces and nephews over the years.

  Although Claudia came to Abiquiu every summer to oversee the maintenance of the garden, O’Keeffe told friends that her younger sister could be tedious company. When she ran into Jean Seth at the Wheelwright Museum, O’Keeffe invited her to lunch, saying, “You must meet Claudia. I don’t know what to do with her.”23

  As it turned out, Claudia and Jean shared an improbable affection for the track and made regular pilgrimages to the horseraces. On one such trip, Claudia, who lived in starstruck Beverly Hills, confided that she wanted to meet the actress Greer Garson. Seth made inquiries and discovered that Garson, in turn, had wanted to meet O’Keeffe.

  Seth made an appointment with Garson and drove the two elderly O’Keeffe sisters out to Pecos, where the movie star lived on a ranch with her husband, Buddy Fogelson. O’Keeffe was in the back seat, insisting, as usual, that the window be open so she could see the colors of the mountains. Halfway there, Seth heard O’Keeffe’s inquire querulously, “Who is Greer Garson?” A shocked Claudia explained, “She’s in movies and on TV.” O’Keeffe protested, “I don’t watch movies or TV.”

  Fearing the worst, Seth drove on. When they arrived, Garson gushed, “Oh, Miss O’Keeffe, I’ve wanted to meet you all my life.” Holding forth a copy of the artist’s autobiography, she politely asked O’Keeffe for her autograph. Luckily, after Garson’s obsequious behavior, O’Keeffe behaved with utmost courtesy.24

  More of the O’Keeffe clan visited their sister in 1979; Catherine Klenert came from Wisconsin with her now married daughter Catherine Klenert Krueger, and Krueger’s now grown children, Georgia and Ray.

  As a boy in 1960, Ray Krueger had visited O’Keeffe for two weeks, an event made memorable by the broken wrist he acquired on a hiking trip to Bandelier National Monument. O’Keeffe had paid his older sister’s tuition to the University of Arizona and offered to pay his way if he went to Harvard University. But Krueger, who preferred to pay his own way, attended the University of Wisconsin.

  In 1979, Krueger, who was established with a law firm in Milwaukee, decided to visit his great-aunt. At Ghost Ranch he spent the weekend catching up and taking walks. At one point O’Keeffe stood Krueger in the light to see the even features of his handsome face. Krueger noticed that he had to speak loudly in order to be heard by his aged aunt.

  Together O’Keeffe and Krueger took the well-worn walk from Ghost Ranch to the cliffs. O’Keeffe told him, “I know the way . . . but you’ll have to watch for the rattlesnakes.”25 When they came to O’Keeffe’s chair, which was placed beneath shade trees, the artist sat and rested. Sitting in the shade, O’Keeffe told Krueger about her June trip to Costa Rica and Guatemala with Hamilton. Krueger was eager to meet the man he’d heard so much about, but Hamilton failed to materialize. Little did Krueger suspect that their lives would soon come to be entwined.

  X

  Working for O’Keeffe had always been demanding, but as she entered her ninth decade, it became an all-consuming chore. After half a dozen years, Hamilton found that working for O’Keeffe was getting the better of him. He had been a hard drinker in the 1970s, but not to the extent that anyone would have confronted him about it. (In New Mexico at the time, it was legal to drive with an open beer in the car.) But his behavior grew increasingly erratic.

  At thirty-four, Hamilton was watching the physical and mental decline of a woman he cared about, but who was growing more childlike and forgetful by the day. Frustrated, he turned his attentions to another woman, Anna Marie Prohoroff Erskine, a dark pretty twenty-six-year-old who had recently divorced the nephew of former senator Barry Goldwater. An art major at Arizona State University, Erskine had visited O’Keeffe in 1979. After chauffeuring her around the sites, Hamilton had fallen in love, and in 1980, they married. A nurturing and maternal personality, Erskine turned out to be a stabilizing influence on her husband.

  The newlyweds lived in an adobe house on one of the highest plateaus overlooking Abiquiu and the surrounding sandstone cliffs. Hamilton had added on to the old shell and raised the peaked roof to provide a studio with a balcony. He installed the heavy timber beams himself and added the wide planked floors. The walls were chocolate-colored mud and straw, and interior furnishings were sparse. A wood-fired stove provided heat. When O’Keeffe first came to visit, she beamed with approval. “It has a very white feeling,” she said. “The light comes through the skylights . . . beautiful light. It makes the room seem very alive.”1

  Though she liked what Hamilton had done with his house, she disapproved of his marriage. As far as O’Keeffe was concerned, there was room for only one woman in Hamilton’s life.

  In 1981, Ebsworth selected Ghost Ranch as the location of his second marriage, to Trish Kloepfer. Before the ceremony, O’Keeffe clutched Ebsworth’s hand and said, “Barney, I don’t believe in marriage. I really didn’t want to get married. Alfred persuaded me.” When the judge arrived and brought out his black polyester robe, O’Keeffe joked, “I thought I was the only one who was going to be wearing a black gown today.”2

  Ebsworth and Kloepfer had intended to use O’Keeffe and one of her assistants, Agapita Judy Lopez, as witnesses to their union, but the judge claimed that a man and a woman were required. O’Keeffe replied, “Two women are as good as a man and a woman and this is it.”3 The judge prevailed, and the gardener was brought in to be Ebsworth’s best man. (Ebsworth later wondered if O’Keeffe had put a hex on the union, since he and Kloepfer later divorced.)

  When Ellen Bradbury joined the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe in 1980, her primary mission was to acquire at least one painting by the state’s most famous artist. Together with architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, Bradbury visited O’Keeffe to discuss the possibility of designing a museum wing for her art. Hamilton was helpful in the negotiations: he and O’Keeffe offered the museum one of O’Keeffe’s top paintings, the floating skull with flowers called Summer Days, which was on the cover of her monograph. They would sell the picture at the reduced price of $350,000 with a gift of $100,000 from the artist to help underwrite the purchase. The museum agreed, and the painting was hung in the main gallery. The museum then balked at paying for the insurance, which they thought the artist should cover. A flustered Bradbury made calls and pleas only to discover that museum bureaucracy was simultaneously withholding the funds for the purchase. Hamilton sent a truck to pick up the painting, and another unsatisfactory chapter in the saga of O’Keeffe and the Museum of Fine Arts came to a close. Summer Days was sold, along with another painting, for several million dollars to Calvin Klein. In 1982, Bradbury resigned from the museum in frustration.

  Although she was nearly blind, O’Keeffe still spent time in her studio in the early eighties relying on her sense of touch to build ceramic pots. She also designed an elongated cone with a fourteen-inch base that tapered upward sixty-five inches to a rounded top. Its simplicity was so compelling that Hamilton had it cast in lacquered bronze in various sizes and surfaces.

  She was thoroughly relieved to see an end to the lawsuit Bry v. Hamilton. After millions spent in legal fees by both parties, O’Keeffe approached Ebsworth, who had managed to remain friendly with both parties. Ebsworth negotiated the financial settlement by which Bry was compensated but Hamilton retained control of the work. Bry received a substantial out-of-court settlement in exchange for her silence. “It was a pretty good settlement when it was first proposed but it was pretty worthless by the time I paid my legal bills. There’s no way anything can pay for eight years wasted like that,” she said. “It was a Kafkaesque game, and I’m sure my life was shortened by it.”4

  Calling the negotiation “four months of excruciating pain,” Ebsworth explained simply, “O’Keeffe liked drama. She liked threesomes, playing people off of one another.”5

  In lieu of payment, Bry donated a suite of Stieglitz’s photographs to the St. Louis Art Museum in his honor. Hamilton offered to give Ebsworth one of his sculp
tures. On the next visit to Abiquiu, Ebsworth visited Hamilton’s studio and picked out one that he liked. Witnessing his decision, O’Keeffe cried, “You can’t have that one, it’s mine.” Hamilton duplicated it as a special favor for Ebsworth.6

  In May 1982, O’Keeffe accompanied Hamilton and his wife and son to Hawaii, her first visit since the memorable months that she’d spent there in 1939. After Hawaii, they traveled to San Francisco, where O’Keeffe’s enlarged spiral was included in an October show of modern American sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. O’Keeffe proudly told a Newsweek reporter who was surprised that she was still making art, “I have a lot of unfinished business.”

  On January 30, 1983, O’Keeffe attended the opening of a retrospective of Stieglitz’s photographs at the National Gallery. Curator Sarah Greenough had worked closely with Hamilton and O’Keeffe for five years, selecting the images and writing essays for the catalogue. Like the earlier Stieglitz retrospective, the 1983 show didn’t include any prints of Dorothy Norman. “They said I didn’t fit into any category,” Norman remarked.7

  In 1982, before Stieglitz’s retrospective, O’Keeffe had been contacted by Sue Davidson Lowe, Stieglitz’s niece and the daughter of his sister Elizabeth and Douglas Davidson. O’Keeffe had known Lowe as a child roaming the fields around the Lake George farmhouse who occasionally disturbed the artist in her shanty studio. After years working as a theater producer and as a landscape designer, in the 1970s Lowe decided that her memories of Stieglitz and O’Keeffe deserved an intimate biography. (Lowe tactfully denied that Norman’s relationship with Stieglitz was sexual, an assertion that Norman was at pains to correct after the book was published.) Lowe toiled for a decade and ultimately sent a copy of her engaging manuscript to O’Keeffe, asking for permission to reproduce Stieglitz’s photographs and use quotes from his correspondence. O’Keeffe responded acidly, “I have read as much of your book as I could without having my head so filled with words that I couldn’t stand it anymore.”8