Georgia O'Keeffe

The paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe, now on exhibition in the Intimate Gallery, offer a variety of aesthetic experiences to the sympathetic observer. Straight lines, horizontal and vertical, parallel or converging, curves which are perfect arcs or parabolas, squares, angles, -- these satisfy the craving for form, outline. Pink on yellow, red combined with green, purple and black, greys in many shades, a tethering of yellow, white, and green, -- these suggest the pleasure promised those who relish color, bold and unrelieved. Roofs of New York buildings, a barn, an arc-light, innumerable windows, lilies, poppies, a pepper, some grapes, some plums, a daisy, a variety of leaves, a shell, -- these are a few of the objects which give O'Keeffe her starting-point. Form, color, and object taken together yield still a different joy.

Leaves, Pink on Yellow is a small painting, startling in some ways. Corresponding to it is Faded and Black Leaves, somewhat larger. The latter is realistic in outline. The leaves with their ragged edges are quick with a tense desire to remain, to linger a while longer. The veining forms shades on brown and black. One of the black leaves is faintly marked in red, clinging to life while fading. Dignified, graceful dying. The other picture is more perfect in suggesting essences, rather than things. The veining is barely indicated. The central vein of the pink, the smaller leaf is not a thin streak but a vivid cleft in the midst of smoothness, -- self-assertion. The colors, pink superimposed on yellow, are not sentimental but strong, initiating a happy, contemplative mood.

The outstanding thing about Yellow Hickory Leaves with Daisy is the coloring. The mass of hickory leaves forming the background for

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the flower blends brown, tan, orange, yellow, and the little green of the veining. The leaves radiate from the centre, the daisy. An ordinary field daisy, yet lifted from lowliness by the divine poetic gift of the artist which can infuse the spread apart white petals with eagerness and expectancy. The centre of this extraordinary daisy is a distinctive gold tinged with shiny green. A happy, happy dream, this painting.

Another painting with a somewhat similar starting-point is called *Yellow Leaves*. Again, the coloring is O'Keeffe's gift to us. Some green, some brown, some yellow, all the leaves with deckled edges, -- there you have the simple ingredients of a living moment.

Unlike these in some respects is *Calla Lilies with Red Anemone*. The lilies of Georgia O'Keeffe are more real than living lilies, for she presents them to us in a glorious vitality. Some of them are lonely, some *paleximix* passionate, some aloof, some seductive, -- all of them pulsate with élan vital, never discernible in a florist's shop. The red anemone is like the daringly conceived offspring of a male and female in a moment of wild passion: one lily clearly is man to the other. The red of the anemone is not a pure red, it is relieved and heightened by a dash of purple and a sombre black centre. Out of the tall lily petals springs a delicate, mobile backdrop of soft greys and greens. A continuous flux is here presented, -- the past and the future, the back- and the foregrounds growing out of each other and into each other. Cosmic unity and perpetual fusion from everlasting to everlasting.

There are two renderings of the East River, both larger than most of the other paintings. In one of these the linear aspects are so complete as to border on mechanical perfection. The coloring, not so bold as in the others, has power in its subdued quality. Mostly greys, a variety of them, a faint shy green in spots; -- the river

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blueness is clouded and dispersed by steams of smoke from factories
and tug-boats. On both sides the river is hemmed in by buildings
compact and tightly fit together. In their petty, busy-body way,
ferry-boats shoot across, condemning the river's life, just like
the bordering buildings. But the river is not yet resigned: its
might within its limits is leashed but not squelched. Smoke in
puff-balls, smoke in a steady flow, or smoke in massness reaches the
pink of the sky too. The factories and apartment-house-skyscrapers,
rounding out the picture, up and down, on both sides of the river,
fit patternly into each other like geometric figures, -- the crazy
hit-or-miss growth of New York has a pattern for one seeing with
the artist's vision.

None the less true but much vaguer, much greyer, is the other
painting of the East River. A shadowy haze envelops everythings, -- it
may be the dawn of a day without a sunrise. In the greyness ascends
a modern Tower of Babel, presuming to reach heaven without humility.
Contrasting with this smoky outline of man's mechanistic skill
stands on a marble window-sill in front (the sill of the window of
the spectator) a glass vase holding two green leaves. The vase is
bordered in a delightful rosy pink, fresh and exuberant. The leaves
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are^rich velvety green, deep-toned like solemn church music. They
dance, they play, they talk, they think, they live. They are evanescent
yet eternal, humble and proud at the same time. Their outline, a harmoni-
ous roundness, signifies completeness; they are small but they contain
the secret of the universe, harmony, peace. In the distance, not far
away, is the upright verticalness of the skyscraper; it is angular and
tall, but it lacks mobility. It has tremendous height, but why? The
color and shape of the leaves embody the spirit of affirmation, the
everlasting Yea, against New York's deadening, everlasting negation.

Miss O'Keeffe with the ineffable intuition of a poet has the
God-given power to counteract all the harshness, the clanging and the
buzz-buzz-buzz, the mundaneness and the grossness of the metropolis.
She sees into the heart of things, -- she touches their surface with
a magic hand and offers these transformed things anew to her communi-
cants.

March, 1928