March 12 Late 'til 8 - O'Keeffe Scholar to Speak
Celebrating the special exhibition, American Moderns 1910-1960: From O'Keeffe to Rockwell, Joslyn presents
"Georgia O’Keeffe and the Great American Thing"
with Dr. Carolyn Kastner, Curator, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
Georgia O’Keeffe’s bold abstract watercolors were first exhibited in New York in 1916 at Alfred Stieglitz’s avant-garde gallery “291.” The young artist joined an older group of modernists—Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Edward Steichen, and Max Weber—all determined to create a Modernism distinct from European traditions. O’Keeffe joined the efforts of these artists to create a distinctly American style of Modern art, a search for what she called “the Great American Thing.” Though O’Keeffe became famous for her large-scale flower paintings, her most iconic contributions to American Modernism were inspired by the bones she collected in the high desert landscape of New Mexico. As she painted her first cow skull in 1931, she declared: “I’ll make it an American painting. They will not think it great with the red, white, and blue, but they will notice it.” This lecture situates Georgia O’Keeffe among American Moderns in the first half of the twentieth century.
CAROLYN KASTNER earned her Ph.D. in American art history at Stanford University. Her research, publications, and curatorial projects are focused on the diversity of American modernism. Since joining the staff of Georgia O’Keeffe Museum,. she has organized the exhibitions O’Keeffiana: Art and Art Materials; Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: An American Modernist; Georgia O’Keeffe in New Mexico: Architecture, Katsinam, and the Land; and Miquel Covarrubia: Drawing a Cosmopolitan Line. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe is the first museum in the United States dedicated to a female artist, and its research center sponsors significant fellowships for scholars of modern American art.
Photo Credit: Will Wilson, Carolyn Kastner, US Citizen, Curator, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX), 2012.