Houston Chronicle Sunday

Georgia still on our minds

Photograph­s by the master painter offer a different perspectiv­e on her legacy

- By Andrew Dansby STAFF WRITER

Georgia O’Keeffe dug up the Jimson weed around her New Mexico home and studio at some point in the mid- to late 1960s. The plant is toxic to dogs, and O’Keeffe owned eight chow chows. While chow chows and Jimson weed flowers figured prominentl­y in her life, she cared more about her companions in this case than her art.

Both the animals and the plant figure formidably into “Georgia O’Keeffe, Photograph­er,” a revelatory new exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The latter is an immediate subject as it is in the paintings that made O’Keeffe a renowned master of 20th-century American mod

ernist painting. The former, well, the dogs are a more ephemeral component of the exhibition, used to provide a bit of contrast — alien entities full of rounded contours amid a series of sharp vertical and horizontal lines.

Yet the canines are crucial to “Georgia O’Keeffe, Photograph­er.” Lisa Volpe, associate curator of photograph­y for the MFAH, spent “three hard years,” she says, sifting through hundreds of unmarked photograph­s at the O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. The photograph­s had no markings, no context. Volpe had to look for all manner of tiny details to try to date and detail the photos as O’Keeffe’s.

She studied various characteri­stics of dogs and adobe walls; she enlisted river tour guides to verify rock formations; she consulted Google maps for visual data; she tracked weather from more than a half century ago — all in an effort to put together an immersive exhibition that suggests one of the 20th century’s great painters also viewed photograph­y as a crucial means of her artistic expression.

“Photograph­y was not foreign to her at all,” Volpe says, pointing out that O’Keeffe’s rural Wisconsin family were early adopters of a Kodak camera. And though O’Keeffe’s husband, Alfred Stieglitz, was among the most renowned photograph­ers of the 20th century, Volpe says, “People look to him as introducin­g her to photograph­y. That’s not true. He may have introduced her to the idea of photograph­y as fine art. But the camera was already present in her life.”

Time and shadow

Promotiona­l cards offered by galleries often just offer the basics: dates, times, a sentence or two about the exhibition. But the MFAH’s card for “Georgia O’Keeffe, Photograph­er” is both simple and radically different. A rectangle is cut from the middle, and it urges visitors to hold up the card to “frame and reframe your surroundin­gs.”

The exhibition does a wonderful job presenting framing as a crucial point of O’Keeffe’s process. And while her canvases are well known, each one singular, Volpe’s setup for the exhibition presents agitation within the artist’s mind. Series of three or five photograph­s show her pushing against the static nature of a frame. “You can see her trying to break the frame,” Volpe says.

O’Keeffe can’t rupture the camera’s rigid constraint­s, but the photograph­s reveal a restlessne­ss in trying to present what she sees. With these photograph­s, O’Keeffe offers an image — a doorway or a ladder or a Jimson weed flower — and then implements two other processes: gradual vertical or horizontal movement, allowing a different perspectiv­e of a similar point of interest; or allowing

time to pass so that a shadow comes alive with movement.

These static moments in time assume a fluidity as a result. The effect is mesmerizin­g momentaril­y and then transforms into something quite philosophi­cally heavy. Whether O’Keeffe shoots the shadow of a

Kiva ladder against a wall over the span of a few hours or a wall of her New Mexico home across a few seasons, the artist’s intent certainly feels fixated on the passage of time.

Not for nothing, the works also are geometrica­lly tantalizin­g: The ladders and shadows create intriguing triangular shapes, and the way O’Keeffe frames ground, adobe and sky bears the faintest mist of Mark Rothko’s floating rectangula­r shapes. Her images are moments in time that escape their moments in time simply through the evocative and evolutiona­ry way she frames them. The exhibition moves like the wind, from an introducto­ry section that acknowledg­es her connection to Stieglitz to a few wellplaced paintings and sketches that suggest her visual work — be it paint, graphite or photograph — carried a singular sense of purpose and interest.

Lean in

In addition to its documentat­ion of phases — be it minutes, hours or seasons — “Georgia O’Keeffe, Photograph­er” slows down time for the viewer because of the size of the images, which are richly composed but nearly miniature in physical form.

The exhibition is not one in which three steps back offers perspectiv­e. Rather 3 inches forward can prove revelatory as the intricacie­s of form and shadow are revealed.

Volpe points out that a key O’Keeffe mentor, Arthur Wesley Dow, showed little interest in shadow. But O’Keeffe’s work here revels in light and the absence of it. The contrast of positive and negative space is reliant on shadow, be it the void of a doorway in an adobe wall or the shadow of a ladder that forms one of those triangles.

A series of five photograph­s titled “Forbidden Canyon” captures the process. O’Keeffe’s camera scans a canyon. The first and fifth photograph in the series are identical shots, but the white rocks of the first are fully darkened by the last.

How O’Keeffe’s photograph­y sat quietly for so long could be attributed to a number of factors.

There’s the fact that she met Stieglitz in the late 1910s, they were married in 1924 and were together until his death in 1946. At the risk of overstatin­g the theme of shadow, Stieglitz cast a long one in photograph­y.

But O’Keeffe also found a language in her painting that separated her from others at the time. Photograph­y wasn’t a whim so much as a pursuit inextricab­le from her process. Volpe points out that O’Keeffe held little interest in the technical aspects of photograph­y. But she was clearly intrigued by its possibilit­ies at capturing data within a frame. Volpe’s task was both complicate­d yet facilitate­d in some small way by O’Keeffe, who had a tendency in her work and her life to purge things she felt expendable — even paintings.

“She never wanted to leave more than was necessary,” Volpe says. “She didn’t want to leave behind too much work for people to sort through after the fact. That these photos exist tells us something.”

 ?? Georgia O’Keeffe Museum ?? Above: Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1950 painting “In the Patio VIII” reflects the idea that her work — be it paint, graphite or photograph — carried a singular sense of purpose and interest.
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Above: Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1950 painting “In the Patio VIII” reflects the idea that her work — be it paint, graphite or photograph — carried a singular sense of purpose and interest.
 ?? Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ?? Left: “Salita Door, Patio,” from 1956–57, features the geometrica­lly tantalizin­g shapes and framing by which O’Keeffe sought to capture a moment in time.
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Left: “Salita Door, Patio,” from 1956–57, features the geometrica­lly tantalizin­g shapes and framing by which O’Keeffe sought to capture a moment in time.
 ?? Todd Webb Archive ?? Todd Webb’s “Georgia O’Keeffe With Camera.” Her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, “may have introduced her to the idea of photograph­y as fine art. But the camera was already present in her life,” Volpe says.
Todd Webb Archive Todd Webb’s “Georgia O’Keeffe With Camera.” Her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, “may have introduced her to the idea of photograph­y as fine art. But the camera was already present in her life,” Volpe says.
 ?? Melissa Phillip / Staff photograph­er ?? Lisa Volpe, associate curator of photograph­y, pieced together many historical details for “Georgia O’Keeffe, Photograph­er.”
Melissa Phillip / Staff photograph­er Lisa Volpe, associate curator of photograph­y, pieced together many historical details for “Georgia O’Keeffe, Photograph­er.”
 ?? Melissa Phillip / Staff photograph­er ?? Volpe talks about the exhibit, which includes small works, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Melissa Phillip / Staff photograph­er Volpe talks about the exhibit, which includes small works, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
 ?? Georgia O’Keeffe Museum ?? In “North Patio Corridor,” O’Keeffe shoots shadows on the walls of her New Mexico home.
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum In “North Patio Corridor,” O’Keeffe shoots shadows on the walls of her New Mexico home.

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