Georgia O’Keeffe at Tate Modern
5 July 2016 § Leave a comment
‘When people read erotic symbols into my paintings, they’re really talking about their own affairs’ – Georgia O’Keefe
This post also appears at www.cellophaneland.com
This is the largest exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe ever to take place outside America and the first retrospective in the UK. Given too that there are no works in any British collection this is a rare opportunity to take a close look at the work of one of the most famous of American artists.
Famed for her close up flowers, New York cityscapes and desert landscapes – with or without bleached animal bones – this is somebody has come to represent the crowning achievements of American modernism.
Her journey was a remarkable one and in the Tate’s largely chronological approach we can see her development, from Wisconsin art student, via New York and a relationship with the leading proponent of European modernism, Alfred Stieglitz, before retiring to a ranch in the arid southwest.
The show opens with an impressive reconstruction of her 1916 show at 291 in New York. A group of charcoal sketches, heavily influenced by tutor Arthur Wesley Dow and Kandinsky’s abstract and spiritual approach, were shown to Alfred Stieglitz, the gallery’s influential owner. He spotted her early promise and put the works on show.
O’Keeffe soon moved to the city, and in to a lengthy relationship with Stieglitz. She adopted the philosophies and scientific ideas of the time: theosophy, synesthesia, with the spiritual underpinning her work. She painted abstracts – one of the first Americans to work this way – with an unmistakeable erotic symbolism that Stieglitz drew on to market her in the gallery.
He added his own nude images of her and stated that as a woman she ‘painted from the womb’. O’Keefe distanced herself from this angle, said the eroticism was in the eye of the beholder and from then veered away from abstracts. Even many years later, when artists like Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro claimed her as an early feminist artist, which she obviously was, she sadly continued to avoid and deny this.
It was in New York too that, bored of the city, she began painting her iconic flowers. Despite stating that ‘I hate flowers—I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move’ they are now her most recognisable works. One somehow imagines them to fill the walls, but when seen at the Tate they seem surprisingly small and less impressive than anticipated.
A 1919 trip took her to the desert, which she adored, returning frequently and eventually moving to Santa Fe from New York when Stieglitz died in 1949. There are plenty of these desert landscapes here and the influence of Emily Carr, a Canadian artist that she met, is clear to see. Carr herself was strongly influenced by another Canadian, Lawren Harris and the Group of Seven. All were concerned with the spiritual within the landscape and one wonders how strong this influence was.
In the desert she painted the colourful, arid landscapes. These are often impressive, but also sometimes they miss the bright light and sharpness you would expect – often appearing rather distant and flat. She also painted the weeds and adobe buildings and some of these stand out in the exhibition as more appealing for their simplicity and abstract forms.
She also loved the sun dried animal bones. Perhaps these represented for her the spirituality of the land but these are perhaps the least impressive works. It is all too obvious, especially when skulls are tackily suspended in space within the landscapes.
Fans of O’Keeffe are sure to love this exhibition whilst for others it may show up limitations, but this is still a show to admire. The Tate has put on a wonderful exhibition, which truly does justice to the fascinating works of a remarkable woman and a groundbreaking artist.
Georgia O’Keeffe is at Tate Modern until 30 October 2016
For more information visit www.tate.org
corot lost in a drunken haze – or not? – the latest news
2 September 2010 § Leave a comment
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The New York News yesterday reported the loss of an £850k Corot painting. A intermediary supposedly lost the painting after a drunken night out. But did he? Here is the story as reported in the New York News:
The artwork’s co-owner, Kristyn Trudgeon, isn’t buying James Haggerty’s tale. “I think he’s a complete fumbling idiot,” a visibly annoyed Trudgeon said outside her West Side apartment. “He’s just a complete a–hole.” Trudgeon and Tom Doyle, who co-own the painting, had hired Haggerty, an old pal, to assist with a possible sale of “Portrait of a Girl” to London gallery owner Offer Waterman. A July 28 afternoon appointment in Doyle’s Empire State Building office fell apart when the Brit wanted a closer look at the painting.
The men agreed to meet later at midtown bistro Rue 57 with Doyle,who then ordered Haggerty to take the painting to The Mark, which is on the upper East Side, for further inspection by Waterman.[…] At 11:30 p.m., the two men left the bar, retrieved the painting and had a conversation in the hotel lobby, court papers say. “Something just didn’t feel right and I didn’t want to be involved,” Waterman said. “So I said no, and I said goodbye.”
Call me a sceptic but it is a familiar tale seen with used cars and dodgy antiques amongst others. Let me describe the familiar tale. A supposedly highly valuable object (insert any dodgy item here) is hawked around. There is little interest and there are no takers. Could it be because it quite simply is not worth it/fake/stolen (again insert appropriate alternative)? The sellers need to find a way to get their money having failed to dupe a buyer. The answer of course is a convenient theft/loss/destruction of the overpriced goods. Result – an insurance claim.
I am of course not suggesting that this is definitely the case here, as the painting has hung in an LA museum and seems to be a genuine Corot, but I look forward to seeing the result of the case and any further developments. There is also the strange question that only one of the two (or more?) owners is suing – and she is claiming from the seller and not insurance company. But there is something we are not hearing here, after all would you – even after a few bevvies – walk around downtown NY at night with something over a million dollars under your arm? No, I didn’t think so!
STOP PRESS
Having written this ready for posting I read that the co-owner, who was not prosecuting, turns out to be a convicted art thief. The case has been dropped. For the full, complex, story click here!!
Related Articles
- Corot Painting Suit to Be Dropped After Co-Owner Sees Mug Shot (businessweek.com)
- ‘Portrait Of A Girl’ LOST By Drunk Man: $1.3 Million Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot Painting Lost By James Carl Haggerty (huffingtonpost.com)
- Man Claims to Have Lost $1.35 Million Painting in Drunken Bender [Mysteries] (gawker.com)
- Man sued for drunkenly losing $1.35M painting (nydailynews.com)