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Lot Essay
Executed 1953.
Throughout her life, Georgia O'Keeffe drew her strongest inspiration from nature. In New Mexico, which she first visited in 1929, O'Keeffe famously painted the natural landscape in a modernist style which emphasized the monumental and spiritual qualities of the Southwest. By 1930, as part of her fascination with the landscape which she would soon adopt as her home, O'Keeffe also began collecting and painting animal bones. The art-historian Majorie Balge-Crozier has written that "O'Keeffe's interest in shapes first led her to notice the animal bones scattered across the New Mexico landscape and decide that they had something to say about the terrain. She began collecting them, and when she returned East, she brought back a barrel of bones. This became a standard procedure during the years that she traveled between New Mexico and New York. In August 1931, writing to Rebecca Salsbury James from Lake George, O'Keeffe says, 'I have been working on the trash I brought along-my bones cause much comment.'" (in E.H. Turner, Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things, Washington, D.C., 1999, p. 62)
That year, the artist began experimenting with animal bones in her work, and in doing so began a series of highly original compositions that would continue to occupy her for the next twenty-five years. Among these works is Antelope Head with Pedernal, in which she superimposes the image of a bleached antelope head with a distant desert landscape. As with the best of her bone paintings, Antelope Head with Pedernal presents a stark, iconic image suggestive of the rugged beauty of the Western landscape.
Among O'Keeffe's first bone paintings are some of her most famous images, including Cow's Skull: Red, White and Blue (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), in which she isolates a cow's skull against the three colors of our country's flag to create a simple and powerful composition, while branding her composition as a wholly American one. The same year, O'Keeffe began incorporating her signature flowers into her skull compositions, resulting in dramatic works such as Cow's Skull with Calico Roses (The Art Institute of Chicago). In 1937, she explored other compositions, and in works such as From the Faraway Nearby (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), she introduced the landscape into her skull compositions. In it, she depicts the skull as a floating image above the pink desert landscape with a backdrop of a pink and blue sky. The juxtaposition is suggestive of the surreal, while retaining her distinctively crisp delineation of concrete form.
Lloyd Goodrich's discussion of From the Faraway Nearby relates closely to her other bone paintings, of which Antelope Head with Pedernal is one of her finest examples: "Each of the individual elements is painted with precise, exquisite realism, but their relations to one another have little to do with ordinary reality. The imagery in this and similar works is enigmatic; it might symbolize nature's eternal cycle of life and death, of mortality and new life, recurring endlessly in the space and light and impersonal beauty of the desert. These skull paintings continue the visionary strain in her earliest works, but in a far different language." (Whitney Museum of American Art, Georgia O'Keeffe, New York, 1970, p. 24) The skulls and bones symbolized many things to the artist, who found in them a spiritual connection with the vastness and beauty of the New Mexico landscape with which she had become so enthralled.
In 1939, when O'Keeffe exhibits the first of these bone paintings at Alfred Stieglitz's gallery, An American Place, she wrote in a statement published in the exhibition catalogue about how the bones came to represent for her the desert she loved: "I have wanted to paint the desert and I haven't known how...So I brought home the bleached bones as my symbols of the desert. To me they are as beautiful as anything I know. To me they are strangely more living than animals walking around...The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even tho' it is vast and empty and untouchable-and knows no kindness with all its beauty." (as quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things, p. 62)
Throughout her life, Georgia O'Keeffe drew her strongest inspiration from nature. In New Mexico, which she first visited in 1929, O'Keeffe famously painted the natural landscape in a modernist style which emphasized the monumental and spiritual qualities of the Southwest. By 1930, as part of her fascination with the landscape which she would soon adopt as her home, O'Keeffe also began collecting and painting animal bones. The art-historian Majorie Balge-Crozier has written that "O'Keeffe's interest in shapes first led her to notice the animal bones scattered across the New Mexico landscape and decide that they had something to say about the terrain. She began collecting them, and when she returned East, she brought back a barrel of bones. This became a standard procedure during the years that she traveled between New Mexico and New York. In August 1931, writing to Rebecca Salsbury James from Lake George, O'Keeffe says, 'I have been working on the trash I brought along-my bones cause much comment.'" (in E.H. Turner, Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things, Washington, D.C., 1999, p. 62)
That year, the artist began experimenting with animal bones in her work, and in doing so began a series of highly original compositions that would continue to occupy her for the next twenty-five years. Among these works is Antelope Head with Pedernal, in which she superimposes the image of a bleached antelope head with a distant desert landscape. As with the best of her bone paintings, Antelope Head with Pedernal presents a stark, iconic image suggestive of the rugged beauty of the Western landscape.
Among O'Keeffe's first bone paintings are some of her most famous images, including Cow's Skull: Red, White and Blue (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), in which she isolates a cow's skull against the three colors of our country's flag to create a simple and powerful composition, while branding her composition as a wholly American one. The same year, O'Keeffe began incorporating her signature flowers into her skull compositions, resulting in dramatic works such as Cow's Skull with Calico Roses (The Art Institute of Chicago). In 1937, she explored other compositions, and in works such as From the Faraway Nearby (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), she introduced the landscape into her skull compositions. In it, she depicts the skull as a floating image above the pink desert landscape with a backdrop of a pink and blue sky. The juxtaposition is suggestive of the surreal, while retaining her distinctively crisp delineation of concrete form.
Lloyd Goodrich's discussion of From the Faraway Nearby relates closely to her other bone paintings, of which Antelope Head with Pedernal is one of her finest examples: "Each of the individual elements is painted with precise, exquisite realism, but their relations to one another have little to do with ordinary reality. The imagery in this and similar works is enigmatic; it might symbolize nature's eternal cycle of life and death, of mortality and new life, recurring endlessly in the space and light and impersonal beauty of the desert. These skull paintings continue the visionary strain in her earliest works, but in a far different language." (Whitney Museum of American Art, Georgia O'Keeffe, New York, 1970, p. 24) The skulls and bones symbolized many things to the artist, who found in them a spiritual connection with the vastness and beauty of the New Mexico landscape with which she had become so enthralled.
In 1939, when O'Keeffe exhibits the first of these bone paintings at Alfred Stieglitz's gallery, An American Place, she wrote in a statement published in the exhibition catalogue about how the bones came to represent for her the desert she loved: "I have wanted to paint the desert and I haven't known how...So I brought home the bleached bones as my symbols of the desert. To me they are as beautiful as anything I know. To me they are strangely more living than animals walking around...The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even tho' it is vast and empty and untouchable-and knows no kindness with all its beauty." (as quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things, p. 62)