Up-and-coming co-stars
Supporting players shine at Crystal Bridges exhibit
THE works by Georgia O’Keeffe are enough of a draw. But wait, there’s more. Much of the appeal of The Beyond: Georgia O’Keeffe and Contemporary Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville through Sept. 3 comes from 53 paintings, sculptures, photographs, collages, murals and more by 20 contemporary artists that show the influence of the renowned artist widely considered to be the mother of American modernism.
Sure, the 35 career-spanning pieces by O’Keeffe, including the masterly Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 (part of Crystal Bridges’ permanent collection and thought to be a cornerstone of American art), and 1927’s celebrity-status Radiator Building—Night, New York, draw a crowd in each of the exhibit’s six sections themed to reflect touch points of O’Keeffe’s art: Flowers, Finding the Figure (revealing how figures gradually dropped from her work to be replaced by flowers), The Intangible Thing, Still Lifes, Cities & Deserts, and The Beyond.
These sections are where the artist’s signature creations—sensual flowers, feminine forms, fluid colors, disquieting poses built around deer and ram skulls in undefined spaces, angular cityscapes, flowing New Mexico mountains, as well as evocative aerial views from airplane windows in search of ethereal horizons done later in life as she was losing her sight (she died in 1986 at the age of 98)—are the exhibit’s flash points. “She painted big so her paintings could not be ignored,” says Chad Alligood, an independent curator who organized the show along with Crystal Bridges’ curator of contemporary art Lauren Haynes.
Yet even the biggest O’Keeffe fans will find themselves intrigued by pieces such as Cynthia Daignault’s series of 360 small landscapes executed by stopping every 25 miles to paint whatever she saw during a 1,500-mile road trip along the outside border of the U.S., Jennifer Packer’s haunting yellow funeral flowers, and the dynamic graphic and paper collage Tulsa street scene Peoria Avenue # 7 by Mark Lewis, whose Under the Oak (Woodward Park) won the Grand Award at the 57th annual Delta Exhibit at the Arkansas Arts Center in 2015.
It’s like going to a big-budget movie built around a stellar performance by a Hollywood superstar, and discovering that the supporting cast is, in itself, worth the price of admission.