Georgia OKeeffe: To See Takes Time

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

In 1916, Georgia O'Keeffe wrote to Alfred Stieglitz that she had "made [a] drawing several times - never remembering that I had made it before - and not knowing where the idea came from." These drawings, and the majority of O'Keeffe's works in charcoal, watercolor, pastel, and graphite, belong to series, in which she develops and transforms motifs that lie between observation and abstraction. In the formative years of 1915 to 1918, she made as many works on paper as she would in the next forty years, producing sequences in watercolor of abstract lines, organic landscapes, and nudes, along with charcoal drawings she would group according to the designation "specials." While her practice turned increasingly toward canvas in subsequent decades, important series on paper reappeared - including charcoal flowers of the 1930s, portraits of the 1940s, and aerial views of the 1950s. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, this richly illustrated volume highlights the drawings of an artist better known as a painter, and reunites individual sheets with their contextual series in order to illuminate O'Keeffe's persistently sequential practice.

Reviews

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.-- "Publishers Weekly"
In emphasizing an early, scrappy chapter, before she found success, the exhibition recasts her as a methodical as well as an intuitive searcher, attuned to the work of her avant-garde contemporaries, constantly renegotiating the balance of abstraction and representation in her strange, radical art.--Johanna Fateman "4Columns"
O'Keeffe devoted the better part of her ninety-eight years to grand, sometimes grandiose oil paintings, despite the ample evidence that she was spectacular with charcoal and watercolor. A world-class sprinter chose to run marathons.--Jackson Arn "New Yorker"
These are sides of O'Keeffe we rarely see.--Lance Esplund "Wall Street Journal"
Included in Publisher Weekly's Spring 2023 Announcements: Art, Architecture & Photography-- "Publishers Weekly"

Author Bio

Samantha Friedman is Associate Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.