07 September 2013 @ 10:42 am
We took two days to go upstate, to see a collection of 32 paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe in a small museum in Glens Falls, NY. The family of Alfred Steiglitz, whom O’Keeffe married, had an estate near Lake George, and they spent summers there for a time. Georgia painted there, some small, abstract, exquisite canvases, many of which I had not seen before. The Hyde Collection gathered them from many places, and it was truly wonderful to see rooms full of them.
She is one of the great abstract painters of the 20th century. Her work is extraordinarily controlled, the nuances of color minute and perfect. Her paintings of Jack-in-the-Pulpit, seen side by side, are monumental and almost hypnotic. I can look at her paintings for a very long time. They are intellectually engaging and emotionally soothing (most of the time). The blue Lake George on the exhibition poster is beautiful: small (most of these paintings are small), full of light that one can almost swear keeps changing, like sunlight on water.
I had never seen Lake George before, nor been to Saratoga Springs, where we spent a few happy hours walking around. But it was O’Keeffe I wanted, and it was a great gift.
