Tag Archives: Georgia O’Keeffe

Red Cannas

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Red Cannas by Georgia O'Keeffe

Red Cannas by Georgia O’Keeffe

Red Cannas is a painting which deals with formal elements and principles such as color, shape, scale, and value. One of the most visually arresting elements of this work is the intense red hue of the flower petals, which cover almost the whole canvas. Because there is such a great deal of red, value becomes more important for creating dimension. The shapes in this piece are rounded and overlapping, which gives the painting a certain fluid softness, and even a sense a visual rhythm. O’Keeffe manages to convey the organic nature of her subject matter through her use of curvilinear forms and gradual shading. She also takes an interesting approach to scale, going so far as to push her image outside the picture frame. This large-scale yet also focused and close-cropped approach is what gives Red Cannas the incredible sense of spatial immediacy that was one of the artist’s hallmarks.

It’s Too Hot to Mow the Lawn

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The rest of the line goes, ‘so we rode a century’, but we didn’t. Today the mercury climbed to near ninety. We fired up the air-conditioning, just to ‘test’ it and then we mowed the lawn. Here is the back story on this day’s endeavors.

Birch Tress at Dawn on Lake George, by Georgia O'Keeffe, 1925

This painting seems more than organic to me, rather it looks sensual, almost erotic. The birch are almost unrecognizable as trees. Still it is a pretty painting. The following paragraph is the Saint Louis Art Museum’s writeup on Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Birch Tress at Dawn on Lake George”.

Sinuous tree trunks and contrasts of pale peach and dark green lend dramatic effect to this work. Georgia O’Keeffe was one of a group of leading American artists who introduced the principles of modern European abstract art to the United States in the early 20th century. Her abstractions of the natural world often feature curving organic forms and maintain a recognizable subject matter.

A letter from the city was waiting for us, when we returned from our bicycle ride yesterday. It basically said, mow your lawn or we will. I must admit that it is over the proscribed 7″ in spots. Those spots just happen to coincide with where our neighbor’s dogs have been fertilizing our grass all winter. The aesthetics of a cyclist’s yard aside, I knuckled under to the rubric that you can’t fight city hall and dug the mower out of winter storage. This excavation unearthed a problem, the water heater is leaking. The joys of home ownership.

In past years the first mowing of the season was always a traumatic affair. That was because in past years, my mower was a reel mower and the old Mark 1 motor wasn’t always up to the job. Now I have an electric mower, so even 7″ long blades are no match to my mower’s snicker-snack. Their curving organic forms fall like leaves of grass to my Ameren powered behemoth.

With the day’s itinerary dictated, I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. Tenderly I will use you short curling grass. I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boots. Long and long has the grass been growing. Give me a field where the unmowed grass grows. The good green grass, that delicate miracle the ever-recurring grass. O deathless grass!

After our transcendental experience with the lawn, we rehung Dan’s aluminium mountain sculpture on the garage. When we were done, we found that the A/C was working just fine and like a siren’s song, its sweet coolness lured us away from any further thoughts of both mowing and biking all in one day. I suspect that the city’s exhortation had less to do with the height of our grass, but with the height of our crazy neighbor’s lawn. If they are going to foreclose on him for back taxes and fees, then it wouldn’t be fair to let us skirt the law either.

Amon Carter Art Museum

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On Thursday after our morning meeting and after visiting the Forth Worth Water Gardens, Don and I visited the Amon Carter Art Museum.  This would be the very same Amon Carter that endowed the Water Gardens.  The Amon Carter Art Museum is devoted to American art.  Its most valuable pieces seem to be from Fredric Remington, Charles Russell and Georgia O’Keeffe.  The museum is free to all and for almost all works, photography is allowed.  These policies are similar to the Saint Louis Art Museum’s. 

There were a few exceptions.  I was not allowed to photograph visiting pieces.  I also was not allowed to photograph other photographs or prints.  So, I contented myself with photographing only original artwork of the first caliber.  Woo Hoo!!

The dust flies, guns blaze away, the wind whips the big hat brims. There is no time for second thoughts. It is big action in big space.

In A Dash for the Timber, the viewer sees riders being pursued by a group of Indians.  They all gallop toward the viewer across a dusty plain. Some of the eight cowboys or prospectors have turned in their saddles to shoot at the pursuing Indians. On the left side of the painting is the edge of a group of trees where the men might hope to find safety.  The sun is shining brightly, and Remington has made the resulting shadows a deep blue violet.  This painting had strong appeal for the American public who enjoyed the romantic notion of the disappearing world of action and adventure in the untamed West.

Charles Russell like Fredric Remington was one of the greatest artists of the American West.  He was born into an upper-class family in Saint Louis, and as a young man, worked as a hunter, trapper and sheep rancher.  Pictured above is Russell’s action packed scene showing the roping of wild horses, Wild Horse Hunters.  Today’s header features a portion of another Russell painting, Lost in a Snowstorm – We Are Friends.

There are just a couple of  Georgia O’Keeffe’s works in the museum’s collection.  I think that she came along too late in Amon Carter’s life to be fully appreciated.  Both of her works are brightly colored.  I chose yellow over red for this post.

In other news, I checked my status in the Post-Dispatch’s One-Minute Movie Contest.  The good news is that the paper’s critics have again chosen me to be one of the finalists.  The bad news is that I have the least number of votes of all of the other finalists in the reader’s popularity contest.  I am not expecting to winning any prizes.  Voting is already closed.

So far this post has featured art from such American artistic luminaries as Fredric Remington, Charles Russell and Georgia O’Keeffe.  These three artist have a lot in common with the next three artists that I would like to introduce.  Following the rule of three, there are three things that they do not have in common:  Where as Remington, Russell and O’Keeffe are all famous artists and their works fetch large sums, they are all also dead.  Nieman, Axe and Haffner are not famous artists, but they are all alive and their works are all affordable too.  The picture above is the postcard picture for the show.  The following blub is the gallery’s write-up.

Featuring a variety of work from four St. Louis area artists, Accumulated Enemies is a journey through whimsical absurdity. Included are three-dimensional works from Annie Nieman, Daniel Axe and Michael Haffner and prints by Caitlin Ayer. Each of the artists brings their own perspective into the show with humorous undertones and a focus on details in strange imagined worlds.

The opening is on Friday, December 18th, from  6:00-10:00 pm.  The show will be at the Hoffman Lachance Contemporary Gallery, which is located at 2713 Sutton Boulevard, in Maplewood, MO.