I've just seen the most wonderful documentary: Alfred Stieglitz, The Eloquent Eye. It's an American Experience documentary, and so many of them are good.

I hadn't known much about Stieglitz's life or work, though I'd seen some of his photographs in exhibits in the photography gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago, which is my favorite gallery in that museum.

One thing I did know about Stieglitz was that he was the husband of my favorite painter, Georgia O'Keeffe. I particularly like her early abstract paintings (like the one at left) because they speak in symbols. Here's a slide show ofO'Keeffe's early work showing a few of the paintings highlighted in the documentary.

When I see these paintings of hers, something in me -- I don't know any better way to express it -- just wants to shout for joy. It reminds me of this passage in Tolkien's The Return of the King when Sam Gamgee learns that a minstrel has made a song about his and Frodo's adventure:

"And when Sam heard that he laughed aloud for sheer delight, and he stood up and cried: 'O great glory and splendour! And all my wishes have come true!' And then he wept."

I learned some things from this documentary about O'Keeffe's career that I didn't know: that when she exhibited her early abstracts, they weren't fully appreciated because she had become a "celebrity" in New York due to an intimate exhibit of photos taken of her by Stieglitz. She also didn't want to hear Freudian (read: sexual) interpretations of her work, and that's when she began painting flowers instead. And ironically, as one of the curators interviewed for the documentary pointed out, that only gave the Freudians more ammunition for their interpretations.