Thammasat University students who are interested in art, American studies, literature, modernism, gender studies, and related subjects may find a newly acquired book useful.
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Wartime Texas Letters is by Professor Amy Von Lintel, who teaches fine arts at West Texas A&M University, the United States of America.
Georgia O’Keeffe was an American modernist painter and draftswoman whose career spanned seven decades and whose work remained largely independent of major art movements.
Called the Mother of American modernism, O’Keeffe gained international recognition for her meticulous paintings of natural forms, particularly flowers and desert-inspired landscapes, which were often drawn from and related to places and environments in which she lived.
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of American modernist art.
The website of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum explains:
Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, renowned for her contribution to modern art. Born on November 15, 1887, the second of seven children, Georgia Totto O’Keeffe grew up on a farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. By the time she graduated from high school in 1905, O’Keeffe had determined to make her way as an artist. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York, where she learned the techniques of traditional painting. The direction of her artistic practice shifted dramatically four years later when she studied the revolutionary ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow offered O’Keeffe an alternative to established ways of thinking about art. She experimented with abstraction for two years while she taught art in West Texas. Through a series of abstract charcoal drawings, she developed a personal language to better express her feelings and ideas.
Here is the publisher’s description of the new book:
In 1912, at age 24, Georgia O’Keeffe boarded a train in Virginia and headed west, to the prairies of the Texas Panhandle, to take a position as art teacher for the newly organized Amarillo Public Schools. Subsequently she would join the faculty at what was then West Texas State Normal College (now West Texas A&M University). Already a thoroughly independent-minded woman, she maintained an active correspondence with her future husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and other friends back east during the years she lived in Texas.
Amy Von Lintel brings to readers the collected O’Keeffe correspondence and added commentary and analysis, shining fresh light on a period of the artist’s life.
The result is an important new examination of one of our most beloved artists during a time when she was in the process of discovering her future identity.
Here are some observations by Georgia O’Keeffe:
1930s
I know I cannot paint a flower. I cannot paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint color I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time.
- letter to William Milliken (1930), quoted in Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe, Laurie Lisle (1981)
Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting it is my effort to create an equivalent with paint color for the world – life as I see it.
The large ‘White Flower’ [Georgia painted in 1929] with the golden heart is something I have to say about White – quite different from what White has been meaning to me. Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know that the flower is painted large to convey to you my experience of the flower – and what is my experience of the flower if it is not color.
- both quotes in a letter to William M. Milliken, New York November 1, 1930; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991
Artists and religionists are never far apart, they go to the sources of revelation for what they choose to experience and what they report is the degree of their experiences. Intellect wishes to arrange — intuition wishes to accept.
- The Second Outline in Portraiture (1936), as quoted in Marsden Hartley, Gail R. Scott – Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988
A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower – the idea of flowers. You put out your hand to touch the flower — lean forward to smell it — maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking — or give it to someone to please them. Still — in a way — nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small — we haven’t time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.. .So I said to myself — I’ll paint what I see — what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it — I will make even busy New-Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.. .Well — I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower — and I don’t.
- O’Keeffe’s contribution (1939) to the exhibition catalogue of the show An American place (1944)
1940s
Equal Rights and Responsibilities is a basic idea that would have very important psychological effects on women and men from the time they are born. It could very much change the girl child’s idea of her place in the world… It seems to me very important to the idea of true democracy – to my country – and to the world eventually – that all men and women stand equal under the sky – I wish that you could be with us in this fight..
- In a letter to Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, February 10, 1944
Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. Since I cannot sing, I paint.
- Time Magazine (May 27, 1947)
The meaning of a word — to me — is not as exact as the meaning of a colour. Colours and shapes make a more definite statement than words. I write this [1974] because such odd things have been done about me with words. I have often been told what to paint … I make this effort because no one else can know how my paintings happen.
- Quote, 1914
1980s
I hate flowers — I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move!
- quote in Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe, Laurie Lisle, Viking Press, New York,
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)