The Museum of Modern Art’s exhibit “To See Takes Time” explores all of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work. Not just the oil paintings of the flowers that she is famous for, it showcases everything else in her career. This is why it took me a minute to connect the dots between O’Keeffe being the famous artist that made the abstract oil paintings of flowers and the show because I have never seen any of her other work in my life. The exhibit explains how she worked up to painting the flowers she is known for while also showcasing work most people have never seen to show her technique and growth as an artist. The exhibition features a lot of non-abstract pieces O'Keeffe made with pastels, graphite, and watercolor. It is almost uncanny to see the art she created that is not a flower. The portrait made with charcoal features is almost an anomaly compared to the rest of her work as even the figure paintings do not have faces. Which is why it stuck out compared to the rest of the pretty much abstract pieces, Throughout the whole exhibit you can see how her style progresses from going back and forth between less detailed colorful abstract watercolor paintings of sunsets to detailed graphite drawings of abstract compositions. The whole show puts together O’Keeffe’s work in a way that shows her exploration of art which got her to the point of creating her abstract paintings of flowers while only showing one of those paintings throughout the whole show.
-Vivian
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ReplyDeleteI really like how you've noted that this isn't her conventional work. I often feel you can get more into an artist head or thought process by looking at their lesser known stuff. Not only were the water colors, and charcoal drawings beautiful and complete works on there own, it kinda helps you see how she got to those flower paintings everyone knows about.
ReplyDeleteMatt V