James Baquet

    Many people instantly recognize the oil paintings of the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986, born the same year as Erwin Schrodinger) and associate it with the American Southwest, primarily the state of New Mexico.

    Few realize that she was born in Wisconsin (in the Midwest), moved as a teen to Virginia (in the South), and lived and studied in several other places before moving to New York and settling down with her future husband — photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz — in 1918.

    Their relationship was an unusual one. It started with an argument over Stieglitz’s showing of some of O’Keeffe’s drawings without her full authorization. After corresponding for a while, she moved in with Stieglitz, who was 23 years older — and a married man. They were not married until Stieglitz obtained a divorce in 1924.

    It wasn’t until 1929, in her early 40s, that O’Keeffe began spending summers painting in New Mexico, producing the works for which she is best known today.

    Her paintings are characterized by bright colors and close-up views of large flowers, animal bones, and other natural items portrayed in very unnatural, almost surreal, ways. She once told a newspaper, “It is only by selection, by elimination, and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things.”

    She spent part of every year in New Mexico for 20 years (1929-1949), and after the death of her husband lived there more or less permanently, until her own death in Santa Fe in 1986. Visitors to her home included famed aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife the author Anne Morrow Lindbergh; popular singer Joni Mitchell; well-known beat poet Allen Ginsberg; and perhaps the best-known of America’s “serious” photographers, Ansel Adams.

    In her later years, O’Keeffe’s vision deteriorated, and she turned to pottery with the assistance of a young friend, Juan Hamilton. She was still able to work in water colors, but abandoned oil painting in her last decade and a half. A museum of her work in Santa Fe, as well as her former home to the north, can still be visited.

    Vocabulary

    Which word above means:

    1. official approval to do something

    2. getting rid of, removing

    3. the making of pots and other items from clay

    4. immediately, right away

    5. became worse

    6. near, enlarged because seen from near

    7. a person who flies airplanes

    8. “more real than real,” appearing between dream and reality