Looking for Georgia O'Keeffe

Aug. 26, 2004

Dear Julie,

Georgia O'Keeffe spent her first summer at the wonder of rock and sky called the Ghost Ranch in 1934 and bought a few acres of the ranch six years later. Earlier settlers, believing evil spirits haunted the land, had named it Rancho de los Brujos, Ranch of the Witches. Now New Mexico travel guides call this "O'Keeffe Country" because its landmarks are identifiable in so many of her paintings.

But O'Keeffe did not paint them realistically. Nothing is less truthful than realism, she said before her 99 years were up.

DC and I just returned from Santa Fe where we attended an annual weekend of mayhem called Indian Market. More than a thousand Native American artists from across America sell their work in booths arrayed around the city's plaza. Many thousands of the rest of us descend on Santa Fe to see the paintings, jewelry and pottery.

Much of the art was stunning but priced for collectors, dealers and investors. The price range we're accustomed to paying for art was meaningless. Santa Fe is a different art world.

Our friend, Edwin, was already in Santa Fe. He's a sculptor who sells his work in different galleries each summer. He guided us through the Friday night maze of gallery openings along Canyon Road.

Cape Girardeau's art galleries recently started coordinating openings on the first Friday of the month. It's starting to become a social event. In Santa Fe, many new shows open every Friday, the wine flows and you can't tell the artists without a scorecard.

One artist was showing huge bronze statues of tigers. Another depicted a couple having sex, both in the flesh and as skeletons. Speaking of ghosts.

There were other wonders but nothing like the show at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.

After O'Keeffe's husband, the famed photographer Albert Stieglitz, presented a show of nudes featuring O'Keeffe as the model early in the 20th century, New York art critics seized upon sexual interpretations of her flower paintings.

O'Keeffe's reaction was to paint identifiable landscapes that could not be interpreted as genitalia. She succeeded, but the sensuality of her rock formations is undeniable. She said the way she experienced this land she loved so much was through her skin.

Leaving Santa Fe, DC and I stayed at an inn near Abiquiu (a-bih-que), a village near the Ghost Ranch. O'Keefe kept a house there, too. The Presbyterian Church now owns the ranch, and its members attend retreats and arts workshops. But anyone can go to the ranch during the day to look around.

We recognized some of the same vistas O'Keeffe saw. But she turned the magnificent craggy hills and distant dark mesas into pictures whose colors and contours do indeed vibrate on your skin. The shapes are recognizable and yet much more real for the feelings of wonder and love of place O'Keeffe summons from them.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.