Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) was an American modernist artist, who is best known for her flower depictions, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. She also produced an outstanding series of works in charcoal, pencil, watercolor, and pastel.
The current exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) celebrates O’Keeffe’s works and highlights her writing, “To see takes time.” Indeed, in her works, O’Keeffe often repeatedly returned to the same themes and reworked them, creating, recycling, and changing motifs that lay somewhere between realism and abstraction.
The artist hopes that even those who are busy will take the time to see the flowers as she does in her painting of them, as she says, “I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.”
Watercolor on paper mounted on board
© 2023 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/33828?artist_id=4360&page=1&sov_referrer=artist
Evening Star No. III (1917) depicts one circular pattern that has a yellow center, a red tail, and two horizontal blue waves below. The artist invites the viewer to see the evening star flower from her perspective. She captures the essence of the flower and paints it in bold shapes and colors. O’Keeffe made a series of evening star depictions.
Evening Star No. VI, 1917
Watercolor on paper, 8 7/8 x 12 inches
© Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Gift of The Burnett Foundation
https://collections.okeeffemuseum.org/object/104/
House with Tree – Green (1918) portrays a traditional house located in a village when the moon is beaming. The moon emerges from the big tree’s shadow. Throughout the entire picture, flecks of white paper can be seen. This painting makes me think of the quiet and pleasant village life, which moves at its own speed and is far away from the hectic pace of the city.
House with Tree – Green, 1918
Watercolor and graphite on paper, 19 x 13 1/8 inches
© Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation
https://collections.okeeffemuseum.org/object/991/
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The years between 1915 and 1918 were her pivotal period of experimentation, as she made as many works on paper as she would during the next four decades. In this period, she did some experiments, including progressions of bold lines, organic landscapes, and frank nudes, as well as the radically abstract charcoals she called “specials.”
O’Keeffe was able to record not just the shapes of nature but also its rhythms. For example, she might trace the sun’s spiraling descent in brightly colored pigment, or she could commit to velvety black the shifting perspective seen from an airplane window. She does not only copy what is seen but feels it, as she says, “I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at – not copy it.”
Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time is on view at MoMA through August 12, 2023.