Georgia O’Keeffe

First of all, I love the name Georgia. Besides being fun to say, it’s timeless, bold, uncommon, and quietly feminine. Not unlike the most famous Georgia I know, painter Georgia O’Keeffe.

Georgia O’Keeffe was a pioneer in her field. Born in 1887, she became the “Mother of American Modernism.” Quite an accomplishment for a woman starting her career at the same time women were fighting for the right to vote. Georgia embraced avant-garde attitudes, having affairs with both men and women (most notably, Frida Kahlo) and helping forge a new trend in art: abstraction.

Currently, MOMA in New York City is exhibiting a collection of O’Keeffe’s abstracts. Having only been familiar with her floral paintings, I was intrigued and decided to spend a layover checking them out.

I must admit abstract art challenges me. Flowers, I get. But to O’Keeffe, a painting of a flower was as abstract as this portrait was realistic.

She referred to these portraits of her friend, Paul Strand, as “almost photographic” in their likeness. She said, “I remember hesitating to show the paintings; they looked so real to me.”

Walking through the exhibit, looking at her work, and reading her musing, I realized that O’Keeffe saw the world through a distictive lens. One in which shapes, lines, space, and shadows were harnessed to express her unique vision.

She once said, “Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint.”

For example, here, she captures an intangible headache.

And in this pastel, she captures the experience of dipping her feet in water.

“the motion of the water had fine rhythm.”

On my visit, I also noted O’Keeffe’s penchant for repetition. She recreated the same images over and over, often using different medium.

Why? Was she struggling to express something elusive? Did she see differences where most see similarities? Was it a study? A frustration? An obsession?

The exhibit is called “To See Takes Time” -another O’Keffee quote.

If you’re going to New York (now through Aug 12), I recommend you take the time to see for yourself.

If you won’t be in New York, these are some of the highlights according to me.

A collection of early charcoals on paper she called “specials.”