A number of quotations from O’Keeffe about her work were displayed on the walls along with the art and the photographs. I was particularly struck by this one:
I’ll tell you how I happened to make the blown-up flowers. In the
twenties, huge buildings sometimes seemed to be going up overnight in
New York. At that time I saw a painting by Fantin-Latour, a still-life
with flowers I found very beautiful, but I realized that were I to
paint the same flowers so small, no one would look at them because I
was unknown. So I thought I’ll make them big like the huge buildings
going up. People will be startled; they’ll have to look at them — and
they did.
The quotation was taken from an interview with O’Keeffe in The Artist’s Voice (1960), conducted by Katherine Kuh. The museum’s website has a page devoted to O’Keeffe’s New York years (1918-1929).
Recent Comments