“Pink Dish and Green Leaves,” 1928–29, by Georgia O’Keefe. (Courtesy of Private collection, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Photograph by Bruce M. White.)
Skyscrapers enhanced by nature’s beauty stand tall at the Art Institute of Chicago.
They’re all works by famed artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who the curators of a newly opened exhibition say isn’t necessarily known for just one specific artistic “style.”
“One of the key takeaways for visitors is that it isn’t easy to characterize who she was and what she did because she did so much,” says Annelise K. Madsen, the Gilda and Henry Buchbinder Associate Curator. “There is a kind of a sense of hard and soft — those hard geometric lines, and then the soft organic forms she puts together in surprising ways and surprising moments in her compositions.”
The exhibit, which opened on June 2 and runs through Sept. 22, explores the artist’s connection to New York City. For some visitors, “My New York” may feel like a departure from her famed Southwest landscapes.
“One of the goals is to gather these New York pictures and think of them as a group,” Madsen said. “As we came to think through the exhibition material, we realized how crucial it was to understand her New York pictures in the context of what she’s been doing in these years. So in the exhibit you’ll see tall buildings next to tiny shells, which was a reporter’s phrase from that time. [Visitors will see] holistically across subject matter and scale, how fluid and bold O’Keeffe is with her aesthetic take on the world.”
Traditionally known to capture nature and Southwestern landscapes and how those natural scenes made her feel, these works explore O’Keeffe’s depiction of the city between 1925 and 1930. Similar to her outdoor pieces, they exemplify her belief that her paintings were a reflection of her thoughts and feelings.
In 1926 she said, “One can’t paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt.”
“This is an exhibition that is designed to introduce an important group of works she made before going to the Southwest, so just in the years prior,” said Sarah Kelly Oehler, the Field-McCormick Chair and Curator. “We’re looking at her work … to show how inventive and fluid she was as a painter at this time. She was an artist who could take a subject, find inspiration in it and really just blossom in all these different directions.”
The series is inspired by the skyscraper she resided in during her New York minute, the Shelton Hotel. At the time, it was the tallest residential skyscraper in the world.
“The Shelton with Sunspots,” 1926, by Georgia O’Keeffe. (Courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Leigh B. Block. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/ Artists Rights Society, New York)
“There’s a sense of this tall or monolithic form rising at the center of the canvas,” Madsen says in reference to “The Shelton with Sunspots.”
“But also a sense of fog and waves,” Madsen said. “The sun is an agent in that composition. So it’s really nature brought up against the man-made or human-built environment.”
Oehler says at that moment in time, New York City was often depicted as a celebration of progress and industry.
“I think she humanizes that in many ways,” Oehler said. “She is bringing in nature as a way of reminding you of her own presence as a human, responding to this, and the ways the natural world still has a place even in New York.”
Madsen said it is important to remember that O’Keefe’s paintings are rooted in real experience.
“I think it helps us understand something that feels abstract versus something that feels representational, even though you see what she’s doing with those forms, shapes and colors aesthetically to make it something else,” Madsen said. “There is some way she connected to a place and the objects and spaces around her that represent something in her work.”
Georgia O’Keeffe: “My New Yorks” runs through Sept. 22 at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave.
Follow Angel Idowu on Twitter: @angelidowu3
Angel Idowu is the JCS Fund of the DuPage Foundation Arts Correspondent.
