Art – Christina Rahm Galanis

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In the fall of 1915, O’Keeffe lived a secluded life as a teacher at Columbia College in South Carolina. In a letter to her friend from Columbia, photographer Anita Pollitzer, she mentions that she read her Kandinsky book for the second time, and in a later letter she says that she wants to start over with her art. The isolation was favorable to what she wanted to do, namely to find symbols that could express the personal essence of her Stimmung (sentiment, feelings). Kandinsky’s concept inner necessity seems to have been a starting signal, considering this citation, from O’Keeffe’s autobiography:

I could see how each painting or drawing had been done according to one teacher or another and I said to myself, ‘I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me – shapes and ideas so near me – so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn’t occurred to me to put them down.’ I decided to start anew – to strip away what I had been taught – to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing – no one interested – no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown – no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal on paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue.

In this drawing, the lines seem to increase speed and collect in an organic spiral shape, that seems to have power enough to force its way over the edge of the paper. The monumental form balances between weightlessness and an enormous organic force, like a big wave about to turn back towards the middle of the earth, by gravity. The outer line of the spiral is repeated in two transparent circles, perhaps bubbles.

There is an odd sensation of color in the black and white.

Obrist, who was well known for his fountain designs, said: Art is intensified life. It could be that O’Keeffe was also inspired by his thoughts about fountain design and the life-giving, natural energy of water. It seems that she with her fountain-like design and its whirling energy, she assembled energy to formulate the way for her own personal creativity.

O’Keeffe made a series of similar abstract drawings in her solitude, that she sent to her friend Anita Pollitzer in New York, for comments. Without telling Georgia, Anita went to 291 and showed them to Stieglitz…

Tags: fountain, water

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9. Inverted Callas

Akvarell

Christina Rahm Galanis ©2005

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Cityscapes

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19. Buy and sell (The Chicago Stock Exchange)

27 x 22 cm, olja på duk

Christina Rahm Galanis,  ©2009

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20. Flag upside down

27 x 22 cm, olja på duk

Christina Rahm Galanis,  ©2009

21. Illusion of Blue Sky

27 x 22 cm, olja på duk

Christina Rahm Galanis,  ©2009

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22. Lookout

27 x 22 cm, olja på duk

Christina Rahm Galanis,  ©2009

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23. Pregnant City

27 x 22 cm, olja på duk

Christina Rahm Galanis,  ©2009

24. Receptivity

27 x 22 cm, olja på duk

Christina Rahm Galanis,  ©2009

25. Summer

27 x 22 cm, olja på duk

Christina Rahm Galanis,  ©2009

26. Time and space

27 x 22 cm, olja på duk

Christina Rahm Galanis,  ©2009

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27. Under Cover

27 x 22 cm, olja på duk

Christina Rahm Galanis,  ©2009

28. Vallmoknopp

205 x 85 cm, olja på duk

Christina Rahm Galanis,  ©1998

29. Magnoliaknoppar

205 x 85 cm, olja på duk

Christina Rahm Galanis,  ©1998

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I wish people were all trees and

I think I could enjoy them then.

Georgia O’Keeffe

The relationship with Stieglitz was in trouble in 1926. According to Peters, he had an affair, and she views Georgia’s tree, The Old Maple, as humanlike, almost scary; as a big fallic shape indicating an uncontrollable, sexual passion.

The Old Maple, 1926The tree looks as if it would be yelling and barking too; not a nice figure to have to deal with. The year before, Georgia had painted a similar tree, but with a much more sensual appeal, in a romantic, pink palette.

Stieglitz actually liked to identify himself with trees on his property, and it could be that those trees are a visual barometer for Georgia’s emotional life in the relationship, as Peters suggests. Some trees are even named after actual people:

The Lawrence Tree from 1929.

She painted this during a visit to D. H. Lawrence near Taos, New Mexico. View it from any angle.

There was a long weathered carpenter’s bench under the tall tree

in front of the little old house that Lawrence had lived in there.

I often lay on that bench looking up into the tree…

past the trunk and up into the branches.

It was particularly fine at night

with the stars above the tree.

John Ruskin and the Romantic movement, put a name on the concept of ”pathetic fallacy”, which means that human feelings are projected onto non-human objects, like for example a tree. One known example of ”pathetic fallacy” is Johan Christian Claussen Dahl’s Birch in a Storm from 1849, depicting a birch tree hanging on for dear life to the steep cliff where it grows.

According to Rosenblum, there are more empathic trees within Romanticism. Mondrian paints trees like ”cosmic mirrors of an organic vitality, so powerful, that it can change roots, stem, branches into a vibrating web in a transitory state between spirit and matter”.

O’Keeffe’s trees, leaves, even flowers and other motifs often contain this human and personal quality.

Books and links

Mondrian’s trees – link.

Pathetic Fallacy in the Nineteenth Century

The Pathetic Fallacy: A Lecture Delivered at the Library of Congress on May 7, 1

Tags: mondrian, pathetic fallacy, trees

A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower – the idea of flowers. You put 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. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small. 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.

Georgia O’Keeffe

Red Canna, 1924

In Red Canna of 1924, O’Keeffe lets warm red nuances meet yellow and cold purplish pink, which emphasizes the heat of the red. Here we have the V-shape again, and the undulations from Blue and Green Music, from 1919, but in this case the composition is centered around a middle line and both waves and V-shapes have a disciplined striving upwards. The elements are still loaded with organic disobedience and force.

In a letter to O’Keeffe, Demuth praised the color in her painting, which was exhibited in 1926, and wanted her to paint one for his music room. He wanted it to fill the room and thought, there would be no need for someone to play in there.

Charles Demuth (1883-1935)
The Figure 5 in Gold (1928)

From The Metropolitan Museum of Art comes this flower with their comment:

Black Iris, 1926

This monumental flower painting is one of O’Keeffe’s masterpieces. Using colors that are subtly graded from impenetrable black-purple and deep maroon to soft pinks, grays, and whites, she captures the ephemeral quality of this springtime bloom. By enlarging the petals to over-lifesize proportions, O’Keeffe forces the viewer to confront what might otherwise be overlooked and, in turn, elevates the ordinary to the extraordinary. When her magnified flowers were first shown in 1924, even Stieglitz was shocked by their audacity. Critics saw sexual content in their delicate contours, organic forms, and lush surfaces, even though the artist always denied such associations.

Books

Chimneys and Towers: Charles Demuth’s Late Paintings of Lancaster

Tags: demuth, flowers, healing color