THE SHELTON
SPOTLIGHT

Published Every Saturday for the
Guests of the Shelton.

NEW YORK CITY

APRIL 24, 1926

GEORGIA O'KEEFFE, ARTIST

THAT witty, ironic and caustic chronicler of current affairs, *The New Yorker*, said in a recent issue:

"If ever there were a raging, blazing soul mounting to the skies it is that of Georgia O'Keeffe. . . . One O'Keeffe hung in the Grand Central Station would even halt the home-going commuters.

Coming upon an O'Keeffe for the first time, one must feel that it is some sort of phantasy or dream. It seems not to be real because it is so joyous. Surely if the authorities knew, they would pass laws against Georgia O'Keeffe, take away her magic tubes and brushes. America with its eyes on success, must not be dazed by the unproductive glory of unmoral beauty."

Georgia O'Keeffe is considered the foremost modern woman painter of America. She is one of the group of painters sponsored by Alfred Stieglitz at the famous "291," who now have their headquarters in Room 303 at the Anderson Galleries. Her first work to attract attention was a series of black and white abstractions exhibited in 1916. Since then there have been paintings of landscapes, trees, still life, much wondered about abstractions and flowers.

Louis Kalonyme in a recent number of *Arts and Decoration* made the following comment on Miss O'Keeffe's work:

"Though there are greater painters, no one in America can paint the living quality

of flowers and branches and leaves as Georgia O'Keeffe does. On her chromatic color scale, whose tones are individual and inimitable and range from the cold fresh green of the sea's mountains of ice to the orange and red moment before the advent of summer twilight, O'Keeffe plays a grand, maternal music which reveals the shape of the world as a woman sees and feels affirmatively toward it. She strips it bare of the defensive veils of false, feminine sentiments and exposes woman as an elementary being, closer to the earth than man."

In her suite on the eleventh floor of the Shelton, that commands a wide sweep of the shifting panorama of the city, Miss O'Keeffe has hung three recently completed paintings which have attracted admiring comment from the few persons privileged to see them. Two of the paintings are of the Shelton itself—but what remarkable studies —athrob with a color, verve (one might almost say a hidden dynamo) that has not been in the power of any other current in-

THE SHELTON SPOTLIGHT

terpreter of the glowing life of the metropoli to express. The paintings leave one with an uncanny sense of physical bigness and oppression, especially the third one, which represents a realistic view of a tiny avenue of sky sandwiched in between great blocks of towering steel.

The two views of the Shelton exercise a certain magnetism in that they almost force a clear study of the play of light and shade. In one painting, the Shelton skyscraper is shown with the sun peeping around the upper turret and the optical illusion of a dozen or more miniature suns scattered over the whole thing. The total effect is one of strange colorful suspense.

Miss O'Keeffe remarked about New York's skyline and soaring skyscrapers against the skies, that this year for the first time they had given her the same feeling of immensity and excitement as the plains or the mountains or the ocean.

"Although a number of people who have seen the New York paintings have found them intensely realistic," said Miss O'Keeffe, "what I tried to put into them, and what these people found was my own excitement and wonder at New York which is in itself a new kind of landscape."

Miss O'Keeffe is not an adherent of what she calls "any cult or ism." The essential characteristic of her work is that she is able to give full scope to her feeling about life in color through the medium of paint.

T. H. R.

A War Correspondent Who Likes the West

William Slavins McNutt, well-known to magazine readers throughout the country for his engaging short stories, and to newspaper audiences both for his popular articles and his record as a diligent war correspondent for Collier's, is a man whom one might picture more at home on an acre-wide plain than in the confinements of a metropolitan hotel.

Unlike many wielders of the pen—or Remington Portable—Mr. McNutt is a great, stalwart, deep-chested fellow whose presence in the lobby or corridor of a modern Manhattan tavern seems a bit incongruous. Looking like some sturdy vaquero, he seems made for the West, and one can well appreciate his intense feeling for that part of the country. One can see him out on the rolling plains referred to by one of the Western troubadours as "uninterrupted trails to meet the sun."

Mr. McNutt has just completed a period of cinema labor in Hollywood for the scenario forces of Metro-Goldwyn. His brother, Patterson McNutt, is the author of that ingratiating comedy—"Pigs," which was very successful here and has just completed an even more striking run in Chicago. Frere Patterson was also the producer of "The Poor Nut."

"Why don't you two get together on something?" we shot, a bit presumptuously, at Mr. McNutt.

He smiled good-naturedly, leaned forward a bit and reflected "Well, we'll see," in a way that made one think that this talented family probably had something up its sleeve already.

Although Mr. McNutt has no prejudice against New York or the East, declaring in fact, that he enjoys Manhattan greatly for a period of the year and that the ideal existence would be a summer-in-California, winter-in-Manhattan affair, his liking for the West crops out spontaneously in conversation. It's a pleasure to hear him speak of the rattling pack and the open road, the mountain highway that beckons one down to San Diego, or the great untamed stretches of the Colorado Desert.

He outlined his idea of the most delightful auto trip in the country, from the beautiful northern post of Seattle down, in leisurely fashion, to 'Frisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

"It's the only way to appreciate the unique charm of that part of the country," he declared. "I've seen couples make such excursions, in Ford's, on less than $150 monthly, camping out. That's real living."

T. H. R.

THE SHELTON SPOTLIGHT

NEXT WEEK—Where to Go—What to See

Theatre Openings

SEX at Daly's on Monday,
Play featuring Mae West.

AT MRS. BEAM'S at the Guild on Monday.
Play by C. K. Munro.

The Movies

CAPITOL—"Beverly of Graustark."
With Marion Davies.

RIVOLI—"The Runaway."
With Clara Bow.

RIALTO—"For Heaven's Sake."
With Harold Lloyd.

WARNERS—"Other Women's Husbands."
With Marie Prevost.

STRAND—"Mile. Modiste."
With Corinne Griffith.

PLAZA—"Sandy," with Madge Bellamy on Sunday and Monday.

"The Untamed Lady," with Gloria Swanson on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"The Love Toy," with Lowell Sherman on Thursday and Friday.

"The Only Way," with Sir John Martin Harvey on Saturday.

LOEW'S LEXINGTON—

"The New Klondike," with Lila Lee on Sunday and Monday.

"Memory Lane," with Conrad Nagel, Eleanor Boardman and William Harris, Tuesday and Wednesday.

"That's My Baby," with Douglas McLean, Thursday and Friday.

"Kiki," with Norma Talmadge, Saturday.

Shelton News

William Collier, Jr. is a recent arrival from Hollywood.

Mr. Jerome Jackson arrived Tuesday from an extended trip abroad.

Two hundred members of the Knights of Columbus will breakfast at the Shelton on May 2nd.

Miss Betty Bronson and her mother will arrive Saturday.

Mr. Paul Bolger and his family will spend the next few months at the Shelton.

Miss Gertrude Olmstead and Mrs. Olmstead have returned to the coast.

Mrs. Bryan and her daughter, Nannette, have returned to their home in Southampton for the summer.

Concerts

BENIAMINO RICCIO, songs—Aeolian Hall—Sun. Eve.

MAXIMILIAN MITNITZKY, violin—Town Hall—Mon. Eve.

MALA BOSKA, piano—Aeolian Hall—Mon. Eve.

PEOPLE'S CHORUS OF NEW YORK—Carnegie Hall—Tues. Eve.

WILLIAM BURT, songs—Town Hall—Wed. Eve.

GREGOIRE ALEXANDRESCO, piano, Aeolian Hall—Wed. Eve.

AMERICAN ORCHESTRAL SOCIETY—Town Hall—Thurs. Aft.

SARAH BORN, songs—Town Hall—Thurs. Eve.

F. LA FORCE, E. BERUMEN—Aeolian Hall—Fri. Morn.

CHRISTINE DOBINS, dances—Town Hall—Fri. Eve.

ARVID SAMUELSON, piano—Aeolian Hall—Fri. Eve.

Sailings

<table><tbody><tr><td>Lituania</td><td>Baltic-Amer. to Copenhagen</td><td>Apr. 27</td></tr><tr><td>Conte Rosso</td><td>Italian Lloyd-to Genoa</td><td>Apr. 27</td></tr><tr><td>Aragway</td><td>Royal Mail-to Southampton</td><td>Apr. 27</td></tr><tr><td>Republic</td><td>United States-to Bremen</td><td>Apr. 28</td></tr><tr><td>Marettania</td><td>Cunard-to Southampton</td><td>Apr. 28</td></tr><tr><td>Hamburg</td><td>Hamburg-Amer.-to Hamburg</td><td>Apr. 29</td></tr><tr><td>Berlin</td><td>North German Lloyd-to Bremen</td><td>Apr. 29</td></tr><tr><td>Oscar II</td><td>Scandinavian-Amer.-to Sweden</td><td>Apr. 29</td></tr><tr><td>Gripsholm</td><td>Swedish-Amer.-to Sweden</td><td>Apr. 29</td></tr><tr><td>Paris</td><td>French-to Harve</td><td>Apr. 30</td></tr><tr><td>Leviathan</td><td>United States-to Southampton</td><td>Apr. 30</td></tr><tr><td>Rotterdam</td><td>Holland-Amer.-to Rotterdam</td><td>Apr. 30</td></tr><tr><td>Lapland</td><td>Red Star-to Antwerp</td><td>Apr. 30</td></tr><tr><td>Homeric</td><td>White Star-to Southampton</td><td>Apr. 30</td></tr><tr><td>Minnekahda</td><td>Atlantic Transport-to Southampton</td><td>May 1</td></tr><tr><td>Caronia</td><td>Cunard-to Liverpool</td><td>May 1</td></tr><tr><td>Lancastria</td><td>Cunard-to London</td><td>May 1</td></tr><tr><td>Baltic</td><td>White Star-to Southampton</td><td>May 1</td></tr></tbody></table>

THE SHELTON SHOP

Shirts

Ties

Collars

Hosiery

Handkerchiefs

Dress Sets

Pajamas

Shopping Bags

Golf Bags

Umbrellas

Stationery

Novelties

Perfumes

Magazines

Candy

Main Floor

Opposite the Grill

THE SHELTON SPOTLIGHT

Miss La Plante's First Trip to
New York

Laura La Plante, the première of whose last picture "The Midnight Sun" took place at the Colony Theatre April 23rd, tried to tell her interviewer that she was more or less the victim of frazzled nerves and voluntary insomnia as a result of her first trip East to the fast-revolving theatrical life of New York.

To the present observer, however, Miss La Plante looked as fresh, blithe and generally lovely as might be anticipated by one who had observed her only on the screen. If she has been an unflagging devotee of cafés, cabarets, and other emporiums of post-sundown amusement in the Greater City, the absence of "crows-feet" under her animated blue eyes belie the fact. This reporter might easily have left under the happy impression that she slept twelve hours nightly—a phenomenon which was a not uncommon occurrence during the rush days of scenario work in Los Angeles.

"But it is so different here," she said. "It seems very difficult to slacken one's pace—to try to 'take things easy.' I came here to see the city and the theatrical life is one of the most important elements of it. I have enjoyed my stay very much but when I get back home I'm sure I'll need the vacation that this trip East was supposed to have been!"

Chatting about the plays and musical shows she has seen in this famous market for fresh, hand picked but occasionally unripe products of the drama, Miss La Plante spoke with enthusiasm of Glenn Hunter's work in "Young Woodley." She referred to "The Wisdom Tooth" as rather in the nature of a duty than an entertainment, and said that although Florence Reed's oriental melodrama at the Beck didn't seem improper because of the clever handling of the role by the star, Lenore Ulric's vivid characterization of an errant Harlem negress realized its potential wickedness.

"I loved 'Sunny,' of course," said Miss La Plante. "And I think 'Tip-Toes' has the best score by far of any musical piece, while 'The Cocoanuts' is the funniest."

—T. H. R.

HOUSE DIRECTORY

BARBER SHOP..................Basement

BILLIARD ROOM..................2nd Floor
Open from 12 noon to 12 p. m. daily.

BOWLING ALLEYS..................Basement
Open from 4 p. m. to 11 p. m. daily.

CAFETERIA......................16th Floor
Breakfast, 7 to 11 week days and 8 to 12 on
Sundays. Dinner, 6 to 8:30 every evening except Sunday.

CARD ROOM......................2nd Floor
Card tables, chess and checker boards free to
guests. Open from 12 noon to 12 p. m.

CIGARS, NEWS STAND AND THEATRE TICKETS

Main Floor

GOLF NETS AND PUTTING GREEN....34th Floor
Residents: $.50. Non-residents: $1.00 per half hour.

GRILL ROOM......................Main Floor
Club breakfasts and club luncheons. Features
steaks, chops and sea-food.
Open 7 a. m. to midnight.

GYMNASIUM......................32nd Floor
Fully equipped. Free to all guests of the Shelton.
Open all day.

LIBRARY.........................2nd Floor
Latest fiction and non-fiction, standard books,
current magazines.

1 p. m. to 11 p. m. week-days; 2 p. m. to 10 p. m.
Sundays.

LOUNGE.......................1st, 2nd and 16th Floors
Two on 1st, three on 2nd and one on 16th floors.

PHYSICIAN....................Subject to Call Day or Night

PRIVATE DINING ROOMS...........2nd Floor
For meetings, banquets, luncheons, teas and
dinners. Piano available. Apply to Mr.
Geoghegan.

STENOGRAPHER AND NOTARY PUBLIC

Main Floor

RESTAURANT...................Main Floor
A la carte service. A special table d'hote dinner
at $1.25 per person served daily from 6 p. m.
to 8:30 p. m. Music each evening during
dinner.

Open 7 a. m. to midnight on week days; Sundays,
8 a. m. to midnight.

ROOF GARDEN...................16th Floor

SHOP..........................Main Floor
Carries haberdashery, hosiery, stationery, toilet
preparations, perfumes, novelties, candy, maga-
zines, etc.

Open from 9 a. m. to 10 p. m.

SQUASH COURTS..................32nd Floor
Three of the fastest courts in the country.

SUN PARLOR.....................16th Floor

SWIMMING POOL..................Basement
Free for residents: Week days—7 to 8:45 a. m. for
men; 9 to 10:45 a. m. for women. Sundays and
holidays—9 to 10 a. m. for men; 10 to 11 a. m.
for women.

Mixed Bathing: Week days and holidays—11 a. m.
to 11 p. m. Sundays—11 a. m. to 9 p. m.

Rates: Residents—Single swim, $.75; 10 tickets for $6.00; 24 for $12.00. Non-residents—Single swim, $1.50; 10 tickets for $12.50; 24 for $24.00.

Swimming and diving lessons by an instructor
from the Dalton School.

VALET SERVICE............Telephone Valet Service
Pressing, cleaning, repairing. Day and night
service.

WRITING ROOM..................2nd Floor

Mountains in the West, by Georgia O'Keeffe

(An American Place)

Georgia O'Keeffe in Taos

By MABEL DODGE LUHAN

WHEN anyone has been living for years on the lower geographical planes and then suddenly reaches an altitude of seven or eight thousand feet there takes place an accelerated action of every part of one's mechanism. Everything in one is speeded up. The heart sends the blood racing to the brain, all the separate cells in the body seem to become enlivened, emotions are heightened and the different senses know a new swift life. It was so with Georgia O'Keeffe when she came to Taos, and she hardly understood, at first, what was happening in her. Perhaps she never quite understood it. Things appeared to her visually enhanced, people were revealed more fully to her and seemed brought further into being than those she had known. "Wonderful" was a word that was always on her lips.

"Well! Well! Well!" she exclaimed. "This is wonderful. No one told me it was like *this*." No one could have understood how "this" appeared to her who had not experienced that almost miraculous acceleration of awareness that climates and altitudes can accomplish in mortals, whose specific peculiarity consists in containing within

them a conglomerate union of all the essences of this earthly planet.

Composite of ethers, oceans, mountains and plains, we need, for our continued sense of life, to share them all from one time to another; we need occasionally to go from cities of the plain to the high peaks above the clouds lest our mountain cells grow too hungry from living exclusively where the great marketing is carried on. And those who live overlong in the upper ether need, sometimes, the sea and, descending to it, "suffer a sea change," an alteration of rhythm, a moistening of the tissues after aridity, an expansion of the heart accustomed to beat high but not broad.

When Georgia came to the high table-land of Taos it made her heart beat high. She was exultant and enchanted. "Well! Well! Well!" she murmured over and over, making one accustomed and habituated to that rhythm and envy her her freshened vision.

Perhaps, for painters, there is nothing more important for a new view of things than these occasional changes of altitude and air. When Georgia saw the usual cross in the desert, who can tell

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PHOTOCOPY FROM: Creative Art
VOL: 8 NO: 6

PAGE: 406-410 DATE: June 1931

The issue has been transferred to Beinecke Library's serials holdings.

D. H. Lawrence's Tree, by Georgia O'Keeffe

(An American Place)

PHOTOCOPY FROM: *Creative Art*

VOL: 8 NO: 6 PAGE: 406-410

DATE: June 1931

The Pueblo-Taos, by Georgia O'Keeffe

(An American Place)

how that cross appeared to her whose sight is at all times more magical than ordinary sight, and was temporarily keyed many degrees higher? (If sight is keyed—and I think it is!)

Certainly her painting, following its secret flow from her brain and hand, was intensified and deepened there in Taos and God knows she needed, to our more ordinary vision, no more intensity or depth. Yet in her work she added to them, and more significant still—let us never forget it is more significant—in her being she became intensified and deepened.

If Taos seemed wonderful to her, Georgia was wonderful in Taos. For the life of the artist one must go to his production so one cannot tell more than the paintings tell. But whoso has eyes may see what Georgia felt and lived through and participated in up there in those regions where the sacred mountain has a consciousness of its own that may sometimes be shared.

And then, if there is one thing more important for Being than breaking an old habit it is to form a new one, to take up a new activity. And Georgia learned how to drive a car in Taos! Sometimes at first, it must be admitted, it appeared that

this was never to become one of her accomplishments! Such a nerve-racking experience falls to the lot of few—to go out with Georgia driving her Ford the first month she had it! Beck Strand had the dubious joy of teaching her and we all watched her lovely silver hair grow more silvery day by day as Georgia propelled the surprised machine ever faster and faster along precipices—over condemned bridges and through narrow gateways. Finally we recognized that Georgia was destined to become a demon driver! Some unaccountable guardianship protected her when, catching sight of a peerless vista stretching below to the deep abyss, she reached her long arm pointing downwards and exclaiming in ecstasy: “Look at *that!*” made straightway for it, forgetting, with an unaccustomed experience of mechanics, that the wheels follow the hand unless one does something about it.

Driving the Ford stimulated Georgia in exact proportion to Beck's nervous apprehension. She would return after a couple of hours of frenzied velocity feeling ten years younger and as though she had thrown her bonnet over the mill, as they say, while Beck—whose noble friendship never

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wavered—would come in haggard and distraught
and sinking into a chair, exclaim:

"Well, I don't know what Stieglitz would say!"

"Well, he's flying, isn't he?" Georgia would answer with zest.

Take an exquisite sensitive mortal like Georgia
O'Keeffe who is so specialized that she is like no
one else—is unique, is as unlike other human be-
ings as a dryad at the bottom of a tarn, seems
outside people's codes, customs, and all folk ways
—and suddenly lift her from sea level to the high-
er vibrations of a place such as Taos and you will
have the extraordinary picture of her making
whoopee! She doesn't make whoopee like other
people do, but she makes it just the same. Her

whoopee is of the finer nerves, the more poignant
vision, awarenesses few others even dream of and
perceptions that have to remain esoteric to the ma-
jority. Far more important than her painting is
her Being, of course, but her Being is her own
while her paintings belong to the world. And when
her spirit soared up into the mystical strange
fastnesses of that strangest of American places
called Taos, it came back with the partial vesti-
ges of her experience that we know as her Art, and
we can trace there somewhat of her benefit, her
added life and her joy, so that we know it did her
what is called good and thus we share somewhat
in her fate.

You had better let her come again, Stieglitz.

Rancho Church—New Mexico, by Georgia O'Keeffe

Phillips Memorial Gallery

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