This book was pitched pretty much exactly at the level I would've wanted for an exploration of Georgia O'Keeffe, one of my very favourite artists: many large colour reproductions spanning all important parts of her body of work, six mid-length essays going into aspects of her work (including its reception and the context in which it was made) in just the right amount of depth, and some shorter interpolated pieces and extracts mostly from contemporary reviews of O'Keeffe's work. Most of the works I've encountered before, and a lot of them in person, but all are always welcome, and some were new as well.
The two strongest through-lines are her relationship to abstraction - as traced, for example, through the development of her 'black place' series, a striking stretch of hills some distance northwest of Ghost Ranch - and the role of gender in how her work has been received and interpreted over time, including the role that Alfred Stieglitz played in creating and disseminating a heavily feminised reading and how that fit with Modernist art currents in America at the time.
There are some illuminating perspectives on abstraction in particular, and how this relates to the sense of infinity in O'Keeffe's work. In relation to the 'patio' series (the door of her patio in Abiquiu that she painted over and over), for example, and Barnett Newman: "Newman developed a heightened sense of the 'sublime' or - more applicable to O'Keeffe - the 'infinite'. This he achieved not by perpetuating traditional 'sublime' subjects, but by making the moment of aesthetic perception of his expansive, 'present' canvases an overwhelming emotional sensation ... O'Keeffe transformed the patio wall motif into an intangible, metaphysical vision".
I also found the discussion about how O'Keeffe was influenced by photography interesting and persuasive - the pathways it opened to abstraction, including the techniques of close ups and unusual perspectives, and the emphasis on negative space. (And again, in that case, in interplay with Stieglitz.)
"It is the abstracting - as with the flowers, the bones, the simplicity - that should be the example, the abstract continuity of unseen patterns and clues, culled in perhaps unrecognizable form at first, but revealing when examined, a simple clarity, wholeness" - Christine Taylor Patten
Black, White and Blue, 1930
The two strongest through-lines are her relationship to abstraction - as traced, for example, through the development of her 'black place' series, a striking stretch of hills some distance northwest of Ghost Ranch - and the role of gender in how her work has been received and interpreted over time, including the role that Alfred Stieglitz played in creating and disseminating a heavily feminised reading and how that fit with Modernist art currents in America at the time.
Black Place III, 1944
There are some illuminating perspectives on abstraction in particular, and how this relates to the sense of infinity in O'Keeffe's work. In relation to the 'patio' series (the door of her patio in Abiquiu that she painted over and over), for example, and Barnett Newman: "Newman developed a heightened sense of the 'sublime' or - more applicable to O'Keeffe - the 'infinite'. This he achieved not by perpetuating traditional 'sublime' subjects, but by making the moment of aesthetic perception of his expansive, 'present' canvases an overwhelming emotional sensation ... O'Keeffe transformed the patio wall motif into an intangible, metaphysical vision".
White Patio with Red Door, 1960
I also found the discussion about how O'Keeffe was influenced by photography interesting and persuasive - the pathways it opened to abstraction, including the techniques of close ups and unusual perspectives, and the emphasis on negative space. (And again, in that case, in interplay with Stieglitz.)
Deer's Skull with Pedernal, 1936
"It is the abstracting - as with the flowers, the bones, the simplicity - that should be the example, the abstract continuity of unseen patterns and clues, culled in perhaps unrecognizable form at first, but revealing when examined, a simple clarity, wholeness" - Christine Taylor Patten
Pelvis Series, Red with Yellow, 1945
