O'Keeffe blossoms at local museum Shelburne suprises Vermont with provocative new exhibition

Author: Maddie Oatman

The name Georgia O'Keeffe often evokes images of sensual flowers or desert vistas saturated with vibrant colors. The Shelburne Museum's exhibit of 25 O'Keeffe paintings, entitled Simple Beauty, touches upon some of these sumptuous floral abstracts, but also offers a unique perspective on a few of O'Keeffe's more unusual subjects. A simple chicken, the profile of a cow and a study of a grapefruit exemplify the exhibit's diversity while tying the artist to the unlikely setting of a Vermont folk-art museum.

But is the setting unlikely? Is O'Keeffe that removed from New England? Though she is known for her work in New Mexico, O'Keeffe actually spent many summers at the nearby Lake George, N.Y. with her husband, famed gallerist and photographer Alfred Stieglitz.

Born in 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wis., O'Keeffe began painting in the early 1900s under the structure of a traditional academic background. Though she won an important prize during art school, she first reached true critical acclaim when successful dealer Stieglitz exhibited her unique black and white charcoal prints in his gallery 291 in New York City in 1915. During the 1920s, O'Keeffe hung around the Stieglitz Circle - which included the most innovative American artists of the age - and enjoyed a decade of experimentation in both Lake George and New York City.

"We often think of O'Keeffe in terms of the Southwest," said exhibit organizer Stephen Jost, "but she was also very much a part of the New York avant garde in the early 20th century."

Simple Beauty's earlier works reflect this experimentation through changes in subject and form. "The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint," said O'Keeffe in an early interview, discussing how nature spoke to her inner emotions. Her journey into the realm of the abstract reaches an extreme with From the Lake, No. 3 in which figments of the landscape turn into glittery bunches or wavy forms that bleed into each other, transporting the viewer into the realm of the unrecognizable. The landscape is made more powerful by emotion and movement than by realistic reflection, and the colors unravel like flames from the focus at the bottom.

O'Keeffe's whimsical side shines through in The China Cock and Cow Licking, where farm animals take on personalities. A cow strains its neck to reach a tempting apple, and its eyes bulge in a comical manner very unlike O'Keeffe's usual lyricism. Paintings like these render Simple Beauty a unique series.

Yet, the O'Keeffe we know best didn't emerge until she visited New Mexico in 1929, returning yearly until deciding to settle down at a ranch near Taos. The colors and images of the New Mexican desert transformed her style and thrust her paintings into a new realm of exploration and representation. She remained in New Mexico for the rest of her life, and enjoyed an almost solitary existence as a painter in the desert.

The most impressive works from New Mexico in the show include The Mountain-New Mexico and Bob's Steer Head. In The Mountain, O'Keeffe turns a static, dry landscape into a sculptural homage to shadow and depth. While we see the overall form of the mountain, we are most entranced by the way mountain becomes movement and life with O'Keeffe's touch. Bob's Steer Head exemplifies O'Keeffe's bone paintings, in which the artist suspended animal skulls - often obtaining a surreal effect - in order to capture what she saw as the spirit of the desert.

The few examples of O'Keeffe's signature flowers reveal her skill in magnifying the importance of the less conspicuous aspects of the world around her. Petunias become monumental when she crops the canvas and focuses on the petals. Red Poppy blooms with an exquisite color palette and almost pulses off the canvas. Background and foreground blur into each other in Purple Petunia. As O'Keeffe pointed out in one interview, "Still, nobody sees a flower. Really it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time."

With her paintings, O'Keeffe lures us into folds of flower petals, soaking with color, and invites us to stay and explore. Her close-ups of the natural world transform details into glimpses of abstract forms we can't always identify, but want to gaze at for hours. Despite their passion, her paintings remain tranquil, controlled and calculated. They brim with shades so deep they want to jump off the page and become three-dimensional. An underlying unity weaves its way through the exhibit at the Shelburne Museum - that of O'Keeffe's wonder at the smallest of details and her ability to transform these details into masterpieces.

The exhibit itself retains its originality by incorporating a couple of other artists' works of similar subjects, such as the still-life Ecstatic Fruit by Severin Roesen. While the paintings are meant to supplement O'Keeffe's treatment of her subjects, their contrasting styles make them somewhat redundant compared to the solid collection of O'Keeffe's work. The exception is the Navajo Turquoise jewelry that really adds to O'Keefe's treatment of the New Mexico culture but doesn't distract from her style.

The exhibit came about in part because of the museum's decision to begin introducing more modern art and design to its exhibition schedule. "We thought an exhibit of the country's best 20th century painters would be a terrific start," said Jost of the decision to highlight O'Keeffe's work.

So far, the museum has experienced great turnout, especially from school groups. "The response has been phenomenal. It's very rewarding to see what a strong chord Georgia O'Keeffe strikes with people of all ages," concluded Jost. Simple Beauty will remain open until the museum closes for the season on Oct. 31st, and costs $13 for students and $10 for Vermont residents.