Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time

In this enlightening entry, Friedman (What Degas Saw), associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art, traces how Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) developed a visual language over the course of her career. Since her earliest days as an art teacher, O’Keeffe drew and painted compulsively—and nearly obsessively—and was inspired by mentor Arthur Wesley Dow to repeat figures until she discovered their perfect composition, scale, and color. In 1915, after O’Keeffe resolved to “start anew, to strip away what I had been taught,” she stopped emulating other artists’ styles and forged her own ideas and motifs, focusing on landscapes, waves, and nudes. Friedman spotlights the watercolors O’Keeffe produced after moving to Texas in 1916, as she explored the possibilities of color in landscape paintings and nude self-portraits; oil depictions of flowers that used “directional strokes that conform to the shape of the subject” after the painter’s 1918 move to New York; and from later in life, aerial views of landscapes that were characterized by a curious mix of abstraction and representation, indicating that “with enough distance, even reality can become unbelievable.” Combining careful analysis, quotes from O’Keeffe, and lush renderings, Friedman arrives at an engrossing and visually arresting synthesis of the artist’s stylistic evolution. Art connoisseurs will treasure this. Photos. (Apr.)