Autumn Trees – The Maple 1924
I run into people at writers’ conferences all the time who say they’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as they can remember. And I think that must be a wonderful thing. They have a lifetime to work on the one thing they care about.
On the other hand, in this century we talk a lot about reinventing ourselves, changing careers, learning new things. And that, too, is an attractive prospect: to open our arms wide and taste all that life has to offer. I tend more toward the dilettante’s way of life, but I can’t help but admire someone who devotes her entire life to one thing. Georgia O’Keeffe was one of those people.
In May, my daughter and I visited the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was even better than I’d expected.
Bella Donna 1939
Like most people, I was familiar with her flower paintings, and the museum did have some nice ones. O’Keeffe said the male artists in her circle thought she was crazy to paint flowers. So instead of giving up, she painted them big. She figured that way people would bother to notice what they may have thought of as insignificant little flowers.
O’Keeffe always denied that her flower paintings were sexual. She said that was just the way men interpreted them. I take her at her word. My daughter doesn’t believe her.
Untitled (Red and Yellow Cliffs) 1940
Flowers were only one of O’Keeffe’s subjects. She painted New York City skyscrapers, New Mexico landscapes, and clouds and rivers as seen from a plane. She was seriously into abstraction. Her abstract paintings were considered cutting edge. (Sorry. I didn’t take photos of her most abstract paintings. If you want to see more, Yelp has 229 photos from the museum.)
Gerald’s Tree I 1937
O’Keeffe decided she wanted to be an artist when she was in the eighth grade. In high school, she was the art editor of the school yearbook. After high school, she went to art schools and taught art. She spent the rest of her life dedicated to art. When she was 85 years old, she developed macular degeneration, but even after that, she continued to make art with the help of an assistant. She died in Santa Fe, NM, at the age of 98.
Machu Picchu I, 1957
Over her career, she produced more than 2000 works, the result of devoting her entire long life to the pursuit of art. Watching interviews of her, it appears that she loved her life and that she kept her deep and sincere enthusiasm for art into old age.
In defense of dilettantes, however, let me just say that we dilettantes can also be seriously devoted to what we do … one thing at a time.
Nicki, this is a fabulous post! What an extraordinary woman – her love and dedication to art never faltered. The paintings are wonderful … like you I knew mostly about her flower paintings and I had to smile at the reason she painted them so huge! The landscapes are beautiful, almost feel as if I’m floating looking at Machu Picchu. Many thanks for sharing your special visit with your daughter.
The Machu Picchu painting is interesting. Georgia O’Keeffe started traveling internationally when she was rather old. One of the subjects that fascinated her from those later days was the view of clouds from above. Another of her subjects that most of us are unfamiliar with is the skyscrapers she painted when she lived in New York City. I think she mainly painted them from below, looking up at the sky. She may have changed the subjects she chose to paint, but she never walked away from art.
I’m a dilettante . . . a dabbler ~> I love to try new things and then move on to other new things (rug hooking, decoupage, sketching, batik, watercolors, knitting, needlepoint, embroidery, ballet, writing, poetry, cooking, songwriting, guitar, piano, clarinet, Bridge, camping, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, paddle boarding, and, yes, . . . practicing law).
Maybe I’m more of a fly-by-nighter!
P.S. Swing by L. Marie’s last post ~> there’s a pleasant surprise waiting.
Thanks, Nancy, for alerting me to check L. Marie’s post. I’m delighted to have won a book in her giveaway.
Wow! What a long list you have! Actually, I have many of the same things on my list–no rug-hooking, and I haven’t embroidered or played the clarinet since I was in high school, but I have had at least a passing interest in many of the things on your list. (And I still love the sound of a clarinet.)
Enjoy the book! (Maybe with a relaxing clarinet playing in the background). 😀
I’m looking forward to it.
Good for her for pursuing her art with such dedication — especially in a time where society frowned upon career women.
Beautiful pictures.
Determined, “head-strong” women probably always have existed, but it must have taken a big dose of determination to live a non-traditional female life in the late 19th and early 20th century. Even after she married Stieglitz, O’Keeffe went her own way, spending her summers in New Mexico without him. He didn’t like it; she felt she had to be there for her art.
Wasn’t Stieglitz kind of an ass, too, having affairs? I’m not sure he deserved unstinting loyalty in return!
I think you’re right about Stieglitz. But in some of the pictures of them together, she looked smitten, so I was glad that she continued to be an independent woman.
It is interesting to hear people say they want to write or do some kind of art, and then they do it for the rest of their lives – even if their art doesn’t gain much traction and even if you reinvent yourself over and over again. I also feel I fall into the dilettantes way of life, like how I fell into writing and read books and check out exhibitions as and when I can, not going out of my way to do so. O’Keefe’s work looks brilliant here…and I think there is more to meets the eye than what she says about her paintings. As artists, we all want to tell something through our art…and sometimes there are messages we will include but never say out loud.
Even dilettants have some form to their lives. A multiplicity of interests can come in useful, the various fields cross-fertilizing each other.
You bring up a good point, Mabel. We all want to express something through our art, and often that thing is best communicated when it’s expressed indirectly through art. Even in writing, sometimes fiction expresses the truth better than non-fiction, or poetry pierces the heart better than being more literal.
I admire people who do that but it’s not me. I will do something intensely. Maybe as long as 10 years and then I’m on to something else. It has filled my life with a broad spectrum of experiences and people. Now if I could paint like O’Keeffe maybe I’d feel differently. Nope, probably not!
Ten years sounds like sufficient time to become good at something. Malcolm Gladwell says we need to practice something for 10,000 hours to become an expert. If my math is correct, that means 40 hrs. a week for 5.2 years. Not bad. Of course, not everyone agrees with Gladwell. They bring up inconvenient facts like–You also need talent and an appropriate personality. And you need to start at the right age. I would add, most of us don’t aspire to be as famously expert as someone like O’Keeffe.
Great post, Nicki! I also admire Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings. I’m glad you had the chance to visit that museum.
I also see value to dedicating one’s life to a craft. Creativity is so vast–one can constantly learn something new. As a writer, you can write novels, screenplays, poetry, flash fiction, short stories, graphic novels, nonfiction, blog posts, etc.
You’re right, Linda. Devoting your life (or a large portion of it) to one field need not be a narrow pursuit. I’m watching the Tony’s tonight, and I’m seeing Broadway actors and singers who are also TV and screen actors. Some of them sing and dance or sing and act or act and write music and scripts. A few of them may have started late, but the Tony’s have been showing photos of them as children acting or singing in amateur productions, so it looks like most of them have been interested in at least the broad area of performance for most of their lives. Interesting.
I’ve always admired O’Keeffe’s work. Thank you for sharing her beautiful paintings and a little history, Nicki.
I’m glad you enjoyed it, Jill. The thousands of paintings she produced were varied and sometimes mysterious. I think she loved color and form, and she seemed to want to convey in her paintings what she felt about something that she thought couldn’t put into words.