30 Artists&Illustrators
the sacrifice required to be alone. “I do not often see
the people I love, and, in the end, I shall suffer for it,”
lamented Edgar Degas, such was his devotion to locking
himself away in his Parisian studio and creating elegant
pastel paintings of dancers. Even close friends were shed
in the pursuit of a sort of higher level of artistry.
If that yearning for solitude was used as a means to
better concentrate, it was also something that often
simply suited the temperament of the artist involved.
In 1945, the painter Lee Krasner moved to the eastern
end of the Hamptons with her husband Jackson Pollock in
search of some peace and quiet after the sleepless din of
New York City. Far from being the agitated character that
we imagine creating his great splatter paintings, Krasner
remembers Pollock’s “inner quietness” and fondness forsitting quietly on the back porch of their old wooden house
after dinner just watching the light. “No need for talking,
for any kind of communication,” she recalled.
Another artistic couple with a troubled relationship was
the painter Georgia O’Keeffe and photographer Alfred
Stieglitz. She was 23 years his junior, yet when he had
an affair with a photographer much younger again and
O’Keeffe suffered career setbacks of her own, she was
hospitalised first for depression and then a nervous
breakdown. During her recuperation in 1934, she visited
Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, a place she would eventually
purchase a small corner of, and live for the next 40 years.
“Most of the time I am alone with my dog and think it is
fine to be alone,” she explained in a letter to her friend
Anita Pollitzer in 1958.ABOVE Edward
Hopper, Gas, 1940,
oil on canvas,
102.2x66.7cm.
On display at
Fondation Beyeler,
Basel, until 26 July