While we were at the Whitney Museum last week to see the O'Keeffe exhibit we also surveyed the permanent collection and I was delighted to find a small painting there, inconspicuously displayed, that triggered many lovely thoughts for me: Gerald Murphy's COCKTAIL.
Gerald and Sara Murphy are of consuming interest to me, so much so that I traveled up to New Haven in May 2008 when a wonderful exhibit at Yale gathered together many of Gerald's existing paintings as well as letters, photos and films about the couple who have always fascinated me.
Amanda Vaill's EVERYBODY WAS SO YOUNG is book I have read many times and will read again, a superb joint biography of the Murphys whose lives were so rich in friends and incident but also deeply tainted by numbing tragedy. Seeing Gerald's painting at the Whitney was an unexpected dividend to viewing the works of O'Keeffe.
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