Tag: artworks

  • What if Georgia O’Keeffe attended Harvard?

    What if Georgia O’Keeffe attended Harvard?

    I often wonder what young people think of Georgia O’Keeffe’s art. Now more than a century since her breakout solo exhibition in 1923, how are her paintings seen? What fresh contexts are they given? Interpretations? What new life, if any, will Gen Z offer O’Keeffe? Arielle C. Frommer, for one, has transformed the artist into…

  • Georgia O’Keeffe and the Politics of Seeing

    Georgia O’Keeffe and the Politics of Seeing

    When Jesse’s girlfriend brought him to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in season three of “Breaking Bad,” he was confounded why anyone would paint a door over and over again. Kinda psycho, he thought.

  • Georgia O’Keeffe: rewarding curiosity

    Georgia O’Keeffe: rewarding curiosity

    Georgia O’Keeffe never piled on the paint. She worked wet-into-dry, pretty much a single layer of paint requiring serious control to choreograph her textural effects. Within this narrow range that she chose to work, her variations are virtuosic.

  • Georgia O’Keeffe’s final paintings

    Georgia O’Keeffe’s final paintings

    In case you missed my zoom talk, it’s now available online! It’s my first reading from the work-in-progress: Digging for Stars: The Art of Georgia O’Keeffe. I won’t deny it — the debut was nerve-wracking. My thanks go out to Susan Post of BookWoman and Stephanie Lowe for making it happen. In her late-80s, nearly…

  • You’re invited!

    You’re invited!

    After years of researching and writing, I am giving my first public talk from my book manuscript, “Digging for Stars: The Art of Georgia O’Keeffe.” The talk is FREE, and it’s ONLINE hosted by the fabulous BookWoman bookstore, so you can attend, no matter where you are! Tune in this coming Tuesday, February 22, at…

  • Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer

    Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer

    Georgia O’Keeffe spent 30 years with the legendary American photographer Alfred Stieglitz. She worked alongside him, posed for him, and even spotted prints for him. But she knew not a lick about taking photographs. “Stieglitz used to say I knew less about photography than anybody he ever knew,” she told a journalist in 1962. “Yet,…

  • O’Keeffe: rapturous  possibilities

    O’Keeffe: rapturous possibilities

    I had the experience, once, of viewing an O’Keeffe exhibit that made me question what I had ever admired in the artist. The paintings felt curiously lifeless, and as a whole the show didn’t seem to add up to much. O’Keeffe understood early on that the way paintings are hung determine how they are perceived.…

  • Holiday greetings from Georgia O’Keeffe

    Georgia O’Keeffe was not religious in the institutional sense, but she was deeply spiritual and certainly enjoyed a good ritual. She usually celebrated Christmas with friends, and sent Christmas cards, including one in 1963 that reproduced her 1917 masterpiece, “Starlight Night” (above). In the 1970s, according to her then caregiver and secretary Agapita Lopez (now…

  • Georgia O’Keeffe: Look for yourself

    That Kate Alfriend must have been one heck of a charmer. In 1938, Georgia O’Keeffe made no speech when she accepted her honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts at the College of William & Mary, but she did choose to give a few words to the girl reporter for the student newspaper. This may be the…

  • O’Keeffe: against interpretation

    O’Keeffe: against interpretation

    Georgia O’Keeffe may be the most egregiously over-interpreted artist of all time. The interpretations, and the narratives, have gotten so thick that it’s hard to see past them to the paintings. This 1935 review, one of my favorites, is a clear view to the paintings, “freed [ . . .] from literalism.” “So intensely felt…