Frases de Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Fecha de nacimiento: 15. Noviembre 1887
Fecha de muerte: 6. Marzo 1986
Georgia O'Keeffe fue una artista estadounidense pionera en el campo de las artes visuales. La relación que tuvo con su lugar de residencia, Nuevo México, fue importante para su obra.
Frases Georgia O'Keeffe
„Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven't time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.“
— Georgia O'Keeffe, Georgia O'Keeffe
Context: A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower - the idea of flowers. You put out 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... 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... Well — I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower — and I don't.
O'Keeffe's contribution (1939) to the exhibition catalogue of the show An American place (1944)
„Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing--and keeping the unknown always beyond you.“
— Georgia O'Keeffe
Context: I have been thinking of what you say about form... I feel that a real living form is the natural result of the individual’s effort to create the living thing out of the adventure of his spirit into the unknown.... and from that experience comes the desire to make the unknown known. By unknown I mean the thing that means so much to the person that he want to put it down - clarify something he feels but does not clearly understand... Making the unknown known.... if you stop to think of form as form you are lost.
Quote in a letter to Sherwood Anderson, October 1923; as quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life, Roxana Robinson, University Press of New England, 1999
„The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. … I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.“
— Georgia O'Keeffe
Context: It is surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colours put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. … I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.<!-- Also quoted in Georgia O’Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction (2007), edited by Richard Marshall, p. 13
