I am headed to one of my favorite places to stay, the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, for a one-night retreat. This wonderful old adobe home was built between 1918 and 1922 by an East Coast heiress best known for transforming Taos, New Mexico, into an international epicenter for American modernism. She spent the 1920s and 1930s luring the world’s leading avant-garde writers, artists, and thinkers to her sprawling desert compound. Today, it operates as a hotel and remains my absolute favorite escape.
As a result of Mabel’s tireless efforts, the house grew into an artistic hub that flourished well into the 1950s. Carl Jung, Ansel Adams, Willa Cather, Martha Graham, Marsden Hartley, Leopold Stokowski, and D.H. and Frieda Lawrence were all frequent visitors—as was Georgia O’Keeffe in 1929. In fact, it was Mabel who first introduced O’Keeffe to New Mexico, which inspired me to look for evidence of the iconic painter during my stay.
As it turns out, Mabel loaned Georgia a little house situated on her vast property—the porch of which is pictured below—for three months, or longer if wanted. This pivotal summer is how Georgia first discovered New Mexico, ultimately leading her to Abiquiú, which became her permanent home.
Reflecting on this awakening in numerous interviews, Georgia later said, “As soon as I saw it, that was my country. I’d never seen anything like it before, but it fitted to me exactly.” In this harsh, beautiful landscape, she found the perfect subject for what she called “The Great American Thing”—an art born of what she saw as an authentic, deep America.
I searched everywhere for a photograph of Mabel and Georgia together, but came up completely empty. While I did find several of Georgia’s Taos paintings—including one of her Black Cross works which was painted at the morada behind Mabel’s house—photographs with the two women simply do not seem to exist.
I suspect there is truth to the rumors that they frequently locked horns. It is easy to imagine these two strong-willed women, each staking a creative claim to New Mexico’s high desert, feeling competitive as they both tried to leave an indelible mark.
Yet, they needed each other. Mabel wanted Georgia, who was already being heralded as a true modernist, to flesh out her impressive cadre of writers, poets, and painters.
Georgia, on the other hand, welcomed the free studio space to remain out west, especially since her dominating husband, Alfred Stieglitz, was fiercely opposed to her spending the summer away.
According to the blog Walking Off the Big Apple, “When Mabel Dodge invited Georgia O’Keeffe to spend the summer with her in Taos in 1929, O’Keeffe accepted the invitation without first consulting her husband, Alfred Stieglitz… She spent the summer there without him anyway, awakening to the possibility she had found a new place that seemed like home.”
And so, the two women tolerated one another for a season: the bohemian patron of the arts and the fiercely independent artist.
The Taos News expands on O’Keeffe’s time here in their article, O’Keeffe in Taos: “Dodge Luhan offered O’Keeffe a studio to use that faced Taos Mountain. In front of it ran the acequia madre that divided Taos Pueblo land from the Luhan property, just off Kit Carson Road…
O’Keeffe often slept on the roof so she could experience the stars’ brilliance. It wasn’t unusual for her to sleep on the roof of wherever she was staying. ‘The night light can now come into me,’ she expressed.”
Perhaps that’s why I always choose to stay in the solarium whenever I visit Mabel’s house. A glass top-knot of a room that caps the building, the solarium’s wrap-around windows make me feel entirely at one with the desert, the mountains, and the sky. In the evening the same night light Georgia speaks of envelopes the room with darkness and stars.
The Taos News also notes, “A favorite O’Keeffe activity was an after-dinner ride into the foothills atop Dodge Luhan’s white horse. She would rein in the steed, inhale the sweet air, take in a distant landscape and watch the day’s sunlight fade.”
I love thinking of Georgia out there on horseback, right outside my windows. And, not for the first time, I wish I’d been alive then.
I know she also spent time at the nearby ranch that Mabel gave to D.H. and Frieda Lawrence, because she famously painted the massive pine tree standing in their front yard. I read somewhere that she used to visit them on horseback. Having driven to the Lawrence Ranch myself, I know firsthand that it is quite a distance to travel by horse.
Ultimately, Mabel and Georgia’s fragile alliance shattered. As The Taos News explains, “If not for Mabel Dodge Luhan’s accusation that O’Keeffe was having an affair with Tony, maybe the famous painter would have stayed a little longer in Taos…
Having none of that, O’Keeffe packed her bags and never spoke to Dodge Luhan again. Even though Dodge Luhan was generous, in spite of herself she always put her wrong foot forward. O’Keeffe’s work was the most important thing in her life. Gossip was like a noxious weed.”
As Georgia famously stated, “To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage.” She clearly chose to direct all of her energy toward that purpose, leaving Taos behind for Abiquiú and never looking back. Even so, Mabel had successfully done her job: she had firmly secured the great American modernist for New Mexico.
Love to you all,
Jeane
Originally published June 23, 2019
