Surprise! Georgia O’Keeffe Watercolors
Watercolor, Evening Star No. IV, 1917
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Surprise! Georgia O’Keeffe didn’t just make large iconic oil paintings of flowers, skyscrapers and bones against a desert landscape!
Georgia O’Keeffe at age 30 with her watercolors in Texas, 1916
Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz
Miss O’Keeffe, not quite 30 and not yet famous, moved to Canyon, Texas, in 1916. She spent 17 months in the tiny Panhandle town, teaching at a local college and painting small, luscious watercolors of the Texas landscape and nude figures.
Sunrise and Little Clouds, 1916
Georgia O’Keffee Museum
Nude Series VIII, 1917
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Problem…Nude models were definitely frowned upon for women artists in 1917, and O’Keeffe was intensely interested in painting the human form.
Solution…O’Keeffe used her own body as her model.
O’Keeffe photographed at home in Abiquiú, New Mexico Photo by Philippe Halsman, 1948
In 1986, late in life and almost blind, O’Keeffe enlisted the help of several assistants to enable her to once again create art.
“I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life – and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.” Georgia O’Keeffe
The Kiss and Art
The Kiss of Betrayal
“Kiss of Judas” Fresco (detail), 1304-06
Giotto di Bondone
This magnificent fresco portraying the betrayal of Jesus, was painted by Giotto over 700 years ago in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy.
Giotto portrays Judas thick browed, eyes deep set and dark, almost Neolithic.
Christ’s face is alive: living, breathing, grieving, hurting. Yet we see Christ’s forgiveness and sorrow for Judas and the enormity of his deed…the Judas kiss, the kiss of betrayal.
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The Maternal Kiss
Sleepy Baby, 1910
Mary Cassatt
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, Texas
Whoa! This is not just another sentimental, sugar sweet painting of mother and child! Ponder this painting for a moment: Mother and child share a deep and common love. There is a passion there, a bliss, an ecstasy. The mother and child are physically and intensely wrapped up in each other…almost like the feeling of being “in love.”
It was astonishing that Mary Cassatt (1849-1926), could capture these images as she herself eschewed marriage and a family of her own.
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The Kiss of Passion
From Here to Eternity
Lancaster and Kerr in the beach scene at Halona Cove, Oahu, Hawaii
The greatest beach-kiss scene in film was made in 1953 in a tiny cove on Oahu, in the Hawaiian Islands. The film was adapted from James Jones’ excellent novel, “From Here to Eternity.”
Take a look at this video and you will see why Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr made movie history! Click here if you are unable to view the video.
Ahhh-mazingg’ Art Museum
AHHH-MAZINGG’!
Hottest new museum to hit USA is the Broad Museum in downtown Los Angeles! The architecture alone is worth the trip…a honeycombed boxy building tilted on its side filled with natural light.
Broad Museum
Los Angeles, CA
September 20, 2015
But, ohhh, the art… Blue-chip-masterpieces from the likes of Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Joseph Beuys, Damien Hirst, Kara Walker, and Andy Warhol. And emerging artists as well!
Balloon Dog (Blue), 1994-2000
Jeff Koons
Flag, 1967
Jasper Johns
It is really the private museum of one of Los Angeles’ wealthiest men, Eli Broad. Together with his wife, Edith, Broad has been collecting art for 45 years, often buying works from unknown artists who are now superstars.
A multi-billionaire who made his money in the unglamorous business of tract housing and insurance, Eli Broad says, “we want this to be a gift to the city of Los Angeles.” And sure nuff it is…the admittance to the museum is free and no matter how long the line to get in, no one is turned away.
AHHH-MAZINGGG’!
Video: Art in the Broad. Click here if you are unable to view the video.
(If you are unable to view the video on a mobile device, open your internet browser or YouTube app and try to play the video again, or view on a desktop computer.)
Artists to Watch in 2016!
Spielbergian Climax, Hebru Brantley, 2014
Hebru Brantley
33 years old and 6’8″ tall, Hebru Brantley is Chicago’s fastest-rising visual artist. A street painter turned fine artist making comic-book style pop-art paintings, his figures reflect his growing up on the south side of Chicago. Brantley’s works can command upward of $100,000.
Leaning into the wind,
Dumfriesshire, Scotland, 15
January 2015,
Andy Goldsworthy
Andy Goldsworthy
Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy’s latest work is all about the elements of nature. He explores and seeks intimacy with nature by using leaves, stones, snow, ice, and wind…yes, wind. Goldsworthy makes his art, it stays for a while, and then it is gone.
The art may disappear but Goldsworthy photographs each piece, the process, and the moments of peak and decay. We may no longer have the art, but we have the memory.
Ladies Chatting, Genieve Figgis, 2013
Genieve Figgis
Irish painter, Genieve Figgis, produces paintings rich in color, texture, humor and the macabre. Her canvases draw upon art history, featuring sumptuous domestic interiors and stately country homes. The protagonists are dressed in finery and are innocently feasting, horseback riding and entertaining in their grand salons.
But all is not well. Behind the most mundane facades, Figgis’ figures appear as either faceless or foolishly grinning, ghoul-like creatures. The viewer is shocked, bewildered and intrigued at the turn of events and stops dead in his tracks.
“Art just did its job!”
Salvador Dalí…Revealed!
Magnificent oil painter, megalomaniac, devoted husband, exquisite jeweler, bizarre film creator, sculptor, narcissist, multi-millionaire…
SALVADOR DALÍ
1904-1989
Dalí: “I am the first to be surprised and often terrified by the images I see appear upon my canvas.”
The surreal art world exploded with the arrival of Salvador Dalí in Paris in 1926. Calling his paintings “hand-painted dream landscapes,” Dalí painted streams of consciousness, intense feelings and above all, his dreams.
PAINTING
The Persistence of Memory, 1931
Salvador Dalí
MOMA, New York City
Some art scholars believe that Dalí’s melting clocks may symbolize Albert Einstein’s groundbreaking theory of relativity, a new and revolutionary idea back in the culture of the 1930’s. Through the theory of relativity, Einstein proposed a new concept of time as being relative and complex–not something fixed and easily tracked with as crude a gadget as a pocket watch. Time is melting.
SCULPTURE
Lobster Telephone, 1936
Painted plaster, plastic, and mixed media
Tate Museum, London
The Lobster Telephone is one of Dalí’s most startling and unsettling creations. The simple placement of two unrelated objects together – a lobster on a traditional phone receiver – turns the everyday device into something surreal, making it strange but fascinating. The telephone works, but would you pick it up?!
JEWELRY
Eye of Time brooch, 1949
The Gala – Salvador Dalí Foundation
Theatre-Museum of Figueres, Catalonia, Spain
With his wicked sense of humor and desire to baffle his public completely, Dalí designed wildly imaginative jewelry and very fine jewelry indeed. A watch is set with a ruby, diamonds and enamel. The eye is a finely crafted Swiss timepiece.
Salvador Dalí: “Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dalí.”
Video: The Chaos of Salvador Dalí. Three minutes of Dalí, his art and escapades, narrated by Robert Foxworth, award winning actor and director. Click here if you are unable to view the video