Money Is Not Enough

Georgia O'Keeffe, now 57, is the best-known woman painter in the U.S. A new O'Keeffe show is an artistic event. Last week in Manhattan, for the 28th time, such an event took place.

The 16 smooth-surfaced canvases were standard O'Keeffe: quasi-mystical, highly polished designs inspired by New Mexican landscapes and still lifes. There was the bald roll and wrinkle of creviced hills, Black Place III, suggesting the convolutions of a human brain. There was the shock of a swatch of blue sky seen through the gape of sun-baked bones, Pelvis III. There also were canvases which seemed to represent nothing whatsoever in nature: skillfully colored symbolic forms that were sure to stir the imaginations of most gallerygoers.

Cool, retiring Georgia O'Keeffe's shows are hung by her husband, Photographer-Art Dealer Alfred Stieglitz, in an ascetically bare 17th-floor office building suite. Dealer Stieglitz also handles all O'Keeffe sales; these are usually accompanied by a resounding clang of the cash register. O'Keeffe oils bring between $3-4,000. Record: $10,000, in 1937, for an untitled flower piece bought by Manhattan Beautician Elizabeth Arden.

Last week, as usual, Dealer Stieglitz was regarding prospective buyers with a critical eye. For sometimes, ownership of an O'Keeffe requires considerably more than a checkbook: the money must be accompanied by certain spiritual, emotional and intellectual qualifications satisfactory to Dealer Stieglitz.

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