Georgia O'Keeffe Exhibit to Open
König Preuße, GmbH
By Carl Hartman
Associated Press Writer
Friday, April 16, 1999; 3:18 p.m. EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- For some artists beauty is
in the landscape. Others specialize in portraits.
Georgia O'Keeffe, America's best-known female painter,
found her inspiration in ``things,'' -- the sensuous fold of a
flower, the stark, dry bones of an animal, a black door.
An exhibit opening Saturday uses 69 paintings
to try to explain the why and how of her work.
The Phillips Collection, the first U.S. museum
to buy an O'Keeffe, more than 70 years ago,
calls its show ``The Poetry of Things.'' Later the
paintings, and some of the things themselves --
photos, vases, animal bones -- will visit the Georgia
O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M., and
two other museums in the West.
Painting still life is an old tradition and O'Keeffe
won her first prize at 21 with a more or less traditional
picture of a dead rabbit and a copper pot.
But she moved a long way from that in the rest of her 98 years.
For a while, she did abstract pictures -- lines, colors and
forms with mysterious titles like ``Special XVII.'' O'Keeffe
could be impatient with critics of that work.
A thing is just a thing, she explained, and has no artistic
value until an artist expresses it in form, line and --
of prime importance to her -- color.
``Nothing is less real than realism,'' she wrote. ``Details
are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination,
by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things.''
She moved to painting flowers -- hugely magnified flowers,
``yard-wide lilies'' said one critic. Mexican artist Miguel
Covarrubias caricatured her as ``Our Lady of the Lily.''
It was the early 1920s, Sigmund Freud was riding a wave
of popularity and many people saw sexual images in the
depths of OKeeffe's flowers. She was impatient with that, too.
``What if it is children and love in paint?'' she asked one critic.
``There it is color, form, rhythm. What does it matter if its
origin is emotional or aesthetic?''
O'Keeffe was married to photographer Alfred Stieglitz
for 22 years, until he died in 1946. They had no children.
Biographers have traced several lovers for both of them,
of both sexes.
She made her first visit to New Mexico in 1929, became
fascinated by the cattle bones in the arid landscape and
soon afterward shipped a barrel of them back to New York.
``The first year I was here,'' she explained later in a film
made about her, ``because there were no flowers, so
I started picking up bones.
``The bones do not symbolize death to me. They are shapes
that I enjoy.''
O'Keeffe was 53 when she bought her first house
in New Mexico -- Ghost Ranch. Five years later,
she bought another at Abiquiu and they became her
permanent homes.
``I bought the place because it had the door in the patio,''
she said later of Abiquiu. ``I'm always trying to paint that
door -- I never quite get it.''
She kept trying for the next 14 years, producing
about 30 versions.
O'Keeffe gave up painting at 84 when her sight was
almost gone. She later tried pottery and returned to painting
with help from an assistant.
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe died in 1986.
David R. Voth
"=?iso-8859-1?Q?K=F6nig=20Preu=DFe?=, GmbH" <bbom...@erols.com>
wrote:
>Georgia O'Keeffe Exhibit to Open
Good news. I've seen several of her paintings in person. No
photograph could ever do them justice.
--
"I sure that ALL internet gunloons are 6'2" and date supermodels." - Juan Liberale
http://www.frenchu.com/tpg
König Preuße, GmbH
David R. Voth wrote:
I first saw her cow skull when I was 17, I think.
I can get more excited about going to see
her stuff than Van Gogh's show. This show hasn't been hyped
to that extent, and it's not at the National.
She saw the magic in the Southwest.
ta...@xtra.co.nz
Voth) wrote:
>On Fri, 16 Apr 1999 18:03:21 -0400,
>"=?iso-8859-1?Q?K=F6nig=20Preu=DFe?=, GmbH" <bbom...@erols.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Georgia O'Keeffe Exhibit to Open
>
>Good news. I've seen several of her paintings in person. No
>photograph could ever do them justice.
I think she's highly overrated. Been to the O'Keefe museum. Not
impressed. Been to her house. It's like a fucking shrine, you can't
even go inside but have to look through the damned windows. The only
thing worth seeing in the whole place is a Naguchi lamp over the
dining room table (which happens to be a board on two sawhorses.)
*****
"If you're going to stay home from school today,you
can help me shave my armpits."
--"Juanita" from "Billy Madison"