Wednesday 19 October 2016

WITHOUT AN AUDIENCE THERE IS NO MESSAGE, NO ART.

Image result for georgia o'keeffe santa fe


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.

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