U-M Museum of Art Debuts
Major Georgia O'Keeffe Exhibition
July 11–Sept. 26, 2004
The University of Michigan Museum of Art presents Georgia O'Keeffe and the Sublime Landscape, an extraordinary exhibition that re-examines the work of one of the world's most iconic artists. From her earliest works, O'Keeffe was a visionary who intuitively created new definitions of the sublime, enhanced our perceptions of its visual symbols and inevitably provided us with new ways to view our surroundings and explore our inner selves.
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) is well known for her elegant
studies of enlarged flowers and bleached animal bones in the Southwestern desert.
By situating O'Keeffe's work within the 18th-century aesthetic concept of the
sublime—which associates feelings of fear, gloom and awe with landforms of
immense scale and size, such as mountains, oceans and deserts—the exhibition
shifts the focus of her artistic identity as a 20th-century modernist to include
a broader conception of her pioneering creative influences and her unique place
in the American artistic tradition.
Although most of O'Keeffe's works are landscapes, the sublime, for her, was not necessarily associated with a physical location—New Mexico, Lake George or elsewhere. Hers was a state of mind in which nature and the sublime transcended specific times and places. O'Keeffe's paintings were powerful poems distilled from her imagination and her vision of our surroundings, seductively simple and appealing, yet highly complex explorations of ever-relevant universal sentiments. O'Keeffe begins her compositions by using design as an organizing principle and moves freely between realism and abstraction.
In the early 1930s, O'Keeffe wrote about “that memory or dream thing I do for me comes nearer reality than my objective kind of work.” This comment connects O'Keeffe to the aesthetic concept of the sublime, with its immediate sensation of awe-inspiring, infinite space, and evocative color and light, directly internalized in our own lives.
Spanning more than five decades, the exhibition features over 35 paintings, some drawings, and one sculpture by O'Keeffe, together with paintings by important American artists such as Albert Bierstadt, Martin Johnson Heade and George Inness from the Hunter Museum of American Art (Chattanooga, Tennessee).
Also included are photographs by O'Keeffe's husband, Alfred Stieglitz, and noted American photographer Todd Webb. The exhibition, which is accompanied by a comprehensive and well-illustrated catalogue with essays by noted scholars and artists, will be on view at UMMA from July 11 through Sept. 26, 2004. After its debut in Ann Arbor, the exhibition embarks on a national tour.
Georgia O'Keeffe and the Sublime Landscape is organized by Joseph S. Czestochowski and circulated by International Arts, Memphis. The exhibition was made possible by the assistance of The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, Abiquiu, New Mexico; George Eastman House, Rochester, NY (Alfred Stieglitz Collection); and the Museum of New Mexico, Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe (Georgia O'Keeffe Collection).
The Ann Arbor presentation of the exhibition is made possible
in part by Ford Motor Company. Additional support has been provided by the
Office of the Provost of the University of Michigan, Pfizer Global Research & Development,
The Mosaic Foundation, Michigan Radio, Borders Group, the Ann Arbor News and the State Street Area Association.— Stephanie Rieke, UMMA.
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