TV REVIEW : O’Keeffe- Stieglitz Myth Shattered

Not only the art world but also lovers of avant-garde soap opera will be intrigued by “A Marriage: Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz,” which rings down the season on “American Playhouse” tonight (KCET Channel 28 at 9 and on Friday at 9 p.m. on KPBS Channel 15).

Jane Alexander and Christopher Plummer are compelling as the entitled artists, whose tempestuous marriage and impact on the modernist movement in post-World War I America are the stuff of legend and even myth. Of course, we all know what happens to myths: They get shattered. Stieglitz, a groundbreaking photographer and visionary promoter of artists in his famous 291 (Fifth Ave.) Gallery in Manhattan, is dramatized as a blowhard, adulterer and egregious sexist.

Plummer has a delicious time with this character and does make him a human being. Alexander’s O’Keeffe emerges with a gigantic ego of her own but is observed with much more sympathy.

Stieglitz was already married and 24 years O’Keeffe’s senior when they fell in love and he moved her into a loft. The marriage (in 1924) was a classic clash of opposites--his 19th-Century personal temperament merging with her New Age independence.

As with most movies about artists, we glean little about the act of creativity. But Julian Barry’s script and the direction by Edwin Sherin (Alexander’s husband) draw welcome and dramatically workable attention to the pair’s photos and paintings--his still-lifes and her sensual images from nature.

It’s a fascinating marriage with strong parallels to the emotional upheaval and creative partnership of another famous marriage of artists: Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Rivera was also 24 years older than Kahlo, who served Rivera’s demanding ego with much the same anguished loyalty and love that O’Keeffe gave to Stieglitz.

Stieglitz died in 1946. O’Keeffe lived on at her ranch in New Mexico until her death at 98 in 1986. From the salons of New York to her Ghost Ranch, as it was called, O’Keeffe carved her stature as the first woman painter in America to gain equal acclaim with male artists.

Ultimately, this story of an American artistic legend is successful because it’s not mean-spirited. It’s not holy water either; instead there are measures of empathy for complex characters seldom seen on television.