"When hardness surfaces in the very old we tend to transform it into 'crustiness”' or eccentricity, some tonic pepperiness to be indulged at a distance. On the evidence of her work and what she has said about it, Georgia O’Keeffe is neither 'crusty' nor eccentric. She is simply hard, a straight shooter, a woman clean of received wisdom and open to what she sees. This is a woman who could early on dismiss most of her contemporaries as 'dreamy,' and would later single out one she liked as 'a very poor painter.' (And then add, apparently by way of softening the judgment: 'I guess he wasn’t a painter at all. He had no courage and I believe that to create one’s own world in any of the arts takes courage.')... The men talked about Cezanne, 'long involved remarks about the "plastic quality" of his form and color,' and took one another’s long involved remarks, in the view of this angelic rattlesnake in their midst, altogether too seriously. 'I can paint—one of those dismal-colored paintings like the men,' the woman who regarded herself always as an outsider remembers thinking one day in 1922, and she did: a painting of a shed 'all low-toned and dreary with the tree beside the door.' She called this act of rancor 'The Shanty' and hung it in her next show. 'The men seemed to approve of it,' she reported fifty-four years later, her contempt undimmed. 'They seemed to think that maybe I was beginning to paint. That was my only low-toned dismal-colored painting.'"
From the essay "Georgia O'Keeffe" in Joan Didion's "White Album" (1979).
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13 comments:
She paints like Hitler.
I am not a fan of her style.
It's OK I guess, but I think that her early stuff is much better than all the flowers.
Can you perceive what the Rock's been rolling?
If I were to derive painting rules based on that painting, I would say: Paint the scene as though you're looking at it through cataracts, then go back in and sharpen some — but not all — edges.
"She paints like Hitler."
Not in the least.
I still remember her exhibition in Washington D.C. a few decades ago. Her clouds painting took up an entire wall, and you had to stand on the opposite side to take it all in.
I went through the museum in Santa Fe. I enjoyed it, reminded that they do look like orchids.
I have been told that, when we are young our eyes see more blue. As we age, and cataracts form vision becomes yellow. We know that blue diamonds are valued over yellow, (except for rare "canaries".) When you have cataract surgery the replacement lens is clear, so you go back to seeing blue. Don't know if this is true, but when I was a child I think I saw a brighter more blue world than I do now, I have a very image based memory. Perhaps psychological based on quirks of memory.
The old crusties didn't care what other people thought. Today's curmudgeons are always focused on the audience. They've picked a side and they want everyone to know it. In the old days they were more likely to surprise people with really strange opinions.
It is a pretty uninteresting painting. The window is kind of nice. I suppose if I were a grad student in Art I would liken it to a vulva or something.
The 20-years against hardness in men comment certainly goes a long way to explaining the booming market for erectile dysfunction medications.
There were hard women back in the 70s. One had turned me on to Didion and loaned
me a couple of her early novels. Then, well, she wanted em back. Like right now!
Josephbleau, thenewneo dot com just finished her five-part series on her several years journey to seeing clearly again.
I was always struck by the reaction of a man who was color blind all his life. He was fitted with the new technology glasses the allow him to see colors. He looked around, eyes very wide, and blurted, "You mean you see this all the time?
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