O'Keefe and Kahlo

Katie and I went yesterday to see two art exhibitions by prominent 20th century woman artists: Georgia O'Keeffe (at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts) and Frida Kahlo (at the Walker Art Center). We went to both exhibits with Beth Z. and Heather M. and then returned home for pizza and discussion.

The O'Keeffe exhibit was my favorite of the two. I was especially fond of the "pelvis series" paintings in the collection, which typically depict a blue sky framed by a cow pelvis in the foreground. My favorite O'Keeffe painting from yesterday was Pelvis IV (1944):

O'Keeffe meant to contrast the eternity of the blue sky (with moon in this instance of the series) with the ephemeral nature of life on earth. O'Keeffe may have had World War II on her mind as she painted, but the sobering contrast is just as relevant today as we destroy our planet with greenhouse gases.

At first glance, the abstraction in the piece is subtle. She provides enough shading to make clear the pelvis is a physical object, yet the contrast between background and foreground is not quite realistic. Standing in front of the painting, the blue sky that starts in the background at the initial viewing flips to become an abstract splotch of blue in the middle of a white background. This is emphasized by the painting's texture, sadly not visible in the picture. While the sky and the shading in the pelvis are brushed in, O'Keeffe used a palette knife to spread the white paint thickly around the edges of the canvas. This enhances the confusion between foreground and background and gives the piece its wonderful and subtle abstract contrast.

Frida Kahlo stands in rather stark contrast to O'Keeffe's subtle abstract paintings. Kahlo's surrealist paintings are shocking and evocative. Although famous for her self-portraits (90% of the paintings in the exhibit were this), my favorite painting was a commission, The Suicide of Dorothy Hale (1939):

The painting depicts the suicide of Ms. Hale, a member of high society in New York who became despondent and leaped to her death. It was commissioned by the socialite's mother (who was so horrified upon seeing the painting that she threatened to destroy it). It is rather graphic, depicting both the horror of the fall and the bloody denouement. Very chilling and quite powerful. So powerful, in fact, that the frame could not adequately contain the painting, serving instead as a continuation of the canvas.