Georgia O'Keeffe In Her Own Words
Georgia O'Keeffe shared with us more than paintings. She left words that reveal how she saw the world and her art. Sometimes sharp and uncompromising, other times lyrical and searching, her statements remind us that she was not only a painter of forms and colors but also a thinker determined to define her own path. Collected here, decade by decade, are a selection of O'Keeffe's reflections offering glimpses into the mind of an artist who insisted on speaking, and painting, for herself.
1920s
"Nothing is less real than realism," said Georgia O'Keeffe. "Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things."
"Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression," she said. "It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing I paint."
"I Can't Sing, So I Paint! Says Ultra Realistic Artist; Art is Not Photography — It is Expression of Inner Life!: Miss Georgia O'Keeffe Explains Subjective Aspect of Her Work." New York Sun (5 December 1922), 22.
—
I grew up pretty much as everybody else grows up and one day seven years ago found myself saying to myself — I can't live where I want to — I can't go where I want to — I can't do what I want to — I can't even say what I want to —. School and things that painters have taught me even keep me from painting as I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to and say what I wanted to when I painted as that seemed to be the only thing I could do that didn't concern anybody but myself — that was nobody's business but my own. —So these paintings and drawings happened and many others that are not here. —I found that I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say in any other way — things that I had no words for. Some of the wise men say it is not painting, some of them say it is. Art or not Art — they disagree. Some of them do not care. Some of the first drawings done to please myself I sent to a girl friend requesting her not to show them to anyone. She took them to 291 and showed them to Alfred Stieglitz and he insisted on showing them to others. He is responsible for the present exhibition.
I say that I do not want to have this exhibition because, among other reasons, there are so many exhibitions that it seems ridiculous for me to add to the mess, but I guess I'm lying. I probably do want to see my things hang on a wall as other things hang so as to be able to place them in my mind in relation to other things I have seen done. And I presume, if I must be honest, that I am also interested in what anybody else has to say about them and also in what they don't say because that means something to me too.
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE
Georgia O'Keeffe. Statement from Alfred Stieglitz Presents One Hundred Pictures: Oils, Water-colors, Pastels, Drawings by Georgia O'Keeffe, American. Exhibition brochure, The Anderson Galleries (New York, 29 January-10 February 1923), n.p.
—
I am asked to write a statement for my catalogue. I present here with Messrs. Henry McBride, Allan Burroughs and Royal Cortissoz on my exhibition of last year. My reason for the present exhibition is that I feel that my work of this year may clarify some of the issues written of by the critics and spoken about by other people. Incidentally I hope someone will buy something. I have kept my pictures small because space in New York necessitated that.
Georgia O'Keeffe. Statement from Alfred Stieglitz Presents Fifty-One Recent Pictures: Oils, Water-Colors, Pastels, Drawings by Georgia O'Keeffe. Exhibition brochure, The Anderson Galleries (New York, 3-16 March 1924), n.p.
—
Everyone has many associations with a flower. You put out your hand to touch it, or lean forward to smell it, or maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking, or give it to someone to please them. But one rarely takes the time to really see a flower. I have painted what each flower is to me and I have painted it big enough so that others would see what I see.
Georgia O'Keeffe. Statement from Fifty Recent Painting, by Georgia O'Keeffe. Exhibition catalogue, The Intimate Gallery. (New York, 11 February-3 April 1926), as reprinted in Anita Pollitzer, A Woman on Paper: Georgia O'Keeffe, intro. Kay Boyle. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988, p. 189.
—
"The notion that you can make an artist overnight, that there is nothing but genius, and a dash of temperament in artistic success is is a fallacy," she asserted. "Great artists don't just happen, any more than writers, or singers, or other creators. They have to be trained, and in the hard school of experience."
B. Vladimir Berman. "She Painted the Lily and Got $25,000 and Fame for Doing it! Not in a Rickety Atelier but in a Hotel Suite on the 30th Floor, Georgia O'Keefe [sic], New Find of Art World, Sets Her Easel." New York Evening (12 May 1928), Graphic Magazine Section.
1930s
"I am interested in the oppression of women of all classes," said Miss O'Keefe [sic], "though not nearly so definitely and so consistently as I am in the abstractions of painting. But the one has affected the other. For I agree with you that an artist reflects his generation. But not at all in the crude and obvious way you indicate. Let's see how it worked out in my own case, just as an example.”
"Painting is form, color, pattern. It may add to life only when in these essentials it brings a new perfection, articulates a new concept. All of which has survived has done so because of its command and original use of these abstractions. The subject matter of a painting should never obscure its form and color, which are its real thematic contents, since painting is a different medium than speech. So I have no hesitancy in contending that my painting of a flower may be just as much a product of this age as a cartoon about the freedom of women — or the working class — or anything else. And since the literary element will not blind the onlooker to the painting elements, I think it is much more likely to be good art.”
Gladys Oaks. "Radical Writer and Woman Artist Clash on Propaganda and its Uses — This is an Industrial Age, Michael Gold Tells Georgia O'Keefe [sic], Who Thinks He's All Mixed Up." The World (16 March 1930), Women's Section 1, 3.
—
"For who would be bothered with bones?"
"As a matter of fact," she said, "bones and flowers run together in my mind when I think of the desert. The bones bleach such a beautiful white lying out in the sun. I have always admired them, and last summer I took to picking them up. Then I thought how well they went with the ridiculous artificial flowers that the women have all over the place. And so I have put them together — actually to express what I feel about the desert."
"People think I must have a passion for the calla lily because I have used it so much in my work," she said. "As a matter of fact, I haven't at all. I started to paint it out of curiosity, because I wanted to find out why some people hated it so much and others love it. Of course, I went at it with a very realistic approach. I always do seven or eight different versions of the same thing, until I evolve the final product, like this."
"Of course, I would just as soon do a room of bones," she said "but who would want a room of bones?"
Ishbel Ross. "Bones of Desert Blaze Art Trail of Miss O'Keeffe: Transition from Calla Lilies to Bleached Skulls Seems Natural Step to Painter — Blends Them With Lilies — Together, They Express Her Feelings, She Explains." New York Herald Tribune (29 December 1931), 3.
—
"I can't explain, even if I would," she said. "Words lack accuracy for me and I would have to paint a picture to get the idea over. Probably I would do a picture with another skull in it, and where would we be?"
Allan Keller. "Animal Skulls Fascinate Georgia O'Keefe [sic] but She Can't Explain It — Not in Words: If She Could She'd Have to Do it by Painting Another Animal Skull — New York Artist Paints Because She Has to, but Must Be Alone." New York World-Telegram (13 February 1937).
—
About Myself
A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower — the idea of flowers. You put out your hand to touch the flower — lean forward to smell it — maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking — or give it to someone to please them. Still — in a way — nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small — we haven't time — and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small.
So I said to myself — I'll paint what I see — what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it — I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.
Well — I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower — and I don't.
Then when I paint a red hill, because a red hill has no particular association for you like the flower has, you say it is too bad that I don't always paint flowers. A flower touches almost everyone's heart. A red hill doesn't touch everyone's heart as it touches mine and I suppose there is no reason why it should. The red hill is a piece of the bad lands where even the grass is gone. Bad lands roll away outside my door — hill after hill — red hills of apparently the same sort of earth that you mix with oil to make paint. All the earth colors of the painter's palette are out there in the many miles of badlands. The light naples yellow through the ochres — orange and red and purple earth — even the soft earth greens. You have no associations with those hills — our waste land — I think our most beautiful country — You may not have seen it, so you want me always to paint flowers.
I fancy this all hasn't much to do with painting.
I have wanted to paint the desert and I haven't known how. I always think that I can not stay with it long enough. 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 the animals walking around — hair, eyes and all with their tails switching. 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.
January, 1939
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE
Georgia O'Keeffe. Statement from Georgia O'Keeffe: Exhibition of Oils and Pastels. Exhibition brochure, An American Place (New York, 22 January-17 March 1939).
1940s
If my painting is what I have to give back to the world for what the world gives to me, I may say that these paintings are what I have to give at present for what three months in Hawaii gave to me.
Some of them were painted in Hawaii, some were painted here in New York from drawings or memories or things brought home.
What I have been able to put into form seems infinitesimal compared with the variety of experience.
One sees new things rapidly everywhere when everything seems new and different. It has to become a part of one's world, a part of what one has to speak with — one paints it slowly. One is busy with seeing and doing new things — one wants to do everything. To formulate the new experience into something one has to say takes time.
Maybe the new place enlarges one's world a little. Maybe one takes one's own world along and cannot see anything else.
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE
Georgia O'Keeffe. Statement from Georgia O'Keeffe: Exhibition of Oils and Pastels. Exhibition brochure, An American Place (New York, 3 February-27 March 1940).
—
"I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it."
Daniel Catton Rich. "The New O'Keeffes." Magazine of Art 37, no. 3 (March 1944): 110-11.
—
About Painting Desert Bones
I have picked flowers where I found them —
Have picked up sea shells and rocks and pieces of wood where there were sea shells and rocks and pieces of wood that I liked.
When I found the beautiful white bones on the desert I picked them up and took them home too
I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it
A pelvis bone has always been useful to any animal that has it — quite as useful as a head I suppose. For years in the country the pelvis bones lay about the house indoors and out — always underfoot — seen and not seen as such things can be — seen in many different ways. I do not remember picking up the first one but I remember from when I first noticed them always knowing I would one day be painting them. A particularly beautiful one that I found on the mountain where I went fishing this summer started me working on them.
I was the sort of child that ate around the raisin on the cookie and ate around the hole in the doughnut saving either the raison or the hole for last and best
So probably — not having changed much — when I started painting the pelvis bones I was most interested in the holes in the bones — what I saw through them — particularly the blue from holding them up in the sun against the sky as one is apt to do when one seems to have more sky than earth in one's world —
They were most wonderful against the Blue — that Blue that will always be there as it is now after all man's destruction is finished
I have tried to paint the Bone and the Blue
GEORGIA O'KEEFFE
Georgia O'Keeffe. Statement from Georgia O'Keeffe: Paintings — 1943. Exhibition brochure, An American Place (New York, 11 January–11 March 1944).
—
"The pelvis bone is most beautiful against the blue, that blue that will always be there as it is now, after all man's destruction is finished."
Janet Hollis. "Two American Women in Art — O'Keeffe and Cassatt." Delphian Quarterly 28 (April 1945): 7-10, 15.
—
1950s
"I think I would say that I have worked differently at different times--From the Plains was painted from something I heard very often--a very special rhythm that would go for hours and hours. That was why I painted it again a couple of years ago.
John I. H. Baur. Nature in Abstraction [exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, Phillips Collection, Fort Worth Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Walker Art Center, and City Art Museum, Saint Louis] (New York, 1958), 77.
1960s
"I have wanted to paint the desert and I haven't known how," she once said. "I always think that I cannot stay with it long enough. 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 the animals walking around--hair, eyes and all with their tails switching. The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even though it is vast and empty and untouchable--and knows no kindness with all its beauty."
Daniel Catton Rich. Georgia O'Keeffe: Forty Years of Her Art. [exh. cat., Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts (4 October - 4 December 1960)]
—
"I decided I'd paint some of the things I'd had in my head for so long--and I'd do them in black and white. I'd wait to use colors until I had something that had to have color in it."
“Many people objected to me in the beginning,” she remembers, "because I didn't fit into tradition. In those days you had to be a follower."
"If there is any personal quality in them, then that will be signature enough. The picture on the wall is not an abstract. It's really almost photographic. It's something I saw from the air. There was a line around the whole horizon. It was an extraordinary effect. Here was this great white field of clouds against the blue! I toyed with the idea of doing it on the wall, running it all the way around the room, but decided against it.”
"I'm always swinging from one thing to the other. I have always been very free in my approach. I see no reason why abstract and realistic art can't live side by side. The principles are the same. I like to be interested. And I paint what interests me.
Ralph Looney. "Georgia O'Keeffe." Atlantic 215, no. 4 (April 1965): 106-13.
1970s
"When people read erotic symbols in my paintings they're really talking about their own affairs," she snaps. "I remember how upset I was once by a certain reference Marsden Hartley made to my work in a book. I almost wept. I thought I could never face the world again. But a friend told me, 'Never mind. He's really writing about himself.'"
"Ladders are very important where I live--I have one to climb to my roof. One evening, leaning against it, I saw that the moon was white and high, the sky a magnificent green, I did the painting. I've always meant to have a ladder period, but this is as far as I've got."
"I was flying and saw them--the most extraordinary things. It looked as if you could walk right out of the plane. When I get started with a theme I have to keep on going, so I did four versions. I made the last one that size because--well, I went to a place where they had big pictures and I thought I could do a better one."
Grace Glueck. "It's Just What's In My Head.” New York Times (18 October 1970), section 2, p. 24.
—
"Eroticism!" she exclaimed in cool disdain. "That's something people themselves put into the paintings. They've found things that never entered my mind. That doesn't mean they weren't there, but the things they said astonished me. It wouldn't occur to me. But Alfred talked that way and people took it from him."
Dorothy Seiberling. "The Female View of Erotica." New York Magazine 7, no. 6 (11 February 1974): 54-8.
—
O'Keeffe speaks of trying to capture "the unexplainable thing in nature that makes me feel the world is far beyond my understanding--to understand maybe by trying to put in into form. To find the feeling of the infinity on the horizon line or just over the next hill."
Barbara Rose. "O'Keeffe's Trail." New York Review of Books 24 (31 March 1977): 29-33.
1980s
“I think that what I have been able to give that is important has been my painting," Miss O'Keeffe said. "This will be available for people to see on museum walls for many years. The landscapes that have meant most to me are also there for those who want to see them."
William E. Farrell and Warren Weaver, Jr. "Briefing: Switch — by Georgia O'Keeffe." New York Times (8 November 1983), sec. A, p.24
—
"I hear from so many people who love my work," she told Kotz. "The other day I had the nicest gift. It was a letter from a woman who said I had changed her life. She enclosed a dried milkweed pod in her letter. And the nice thing was that she gave no return address. Her gift was for me not to feel I had to take time to answer.'
Paul Richard. "Appreciation: The Enduring Light of Georgia O'Keeffe," Washington Post (7 March 1986)