WITHOUT AN AUDIENCE THERE IS NO MESSAGE, NO ART.

We went to the Georgia O’Keefe Exhibition at the Tate Modern on Saturday on a lightning trip to London. £35 to get in and it was heaving.

I am not a huge fan and found it quite disappointing.  The works were largely the earlier black & white line drawings with their sensuous sexual connotations; the flower stuff [not many of them, thank God] and barely half a dozen of her intense colour landscapes. Which were what we made the effort for.

When we went to Santa Fe the second time we visited the Georgia O’Keefe Museum; I remember we took the bus for some reason. I didn’t know her at all then, just a vague awareness of her as an American landscape painter. They had curated the very best of her New Mexico output, what a shame they didn’t lend it to the Tate for this exhibition but some Dweed has decided they should show her arc. Are we interested in her arc? I am interested in Picasso’s arc because it’s all precociously brilliant but this is someone still looking for her groove: bit like early Hendrix before he came to England. She gets there in the end but £35?  

Having said which, I think the painting at the top of the page which is not in the Tate but is in Santa Fe, is outstanding. The white band just above the tree-line is inspired.