Blue and Green Music

1919–21

Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887–1986)

Around 1920 Georgia O’Keeffe painted a number of oils exploring, as she later recalled, “the idea that music could be translated into something for the eye.” In Blue and Green Music, O’Keeffe’s colors and forms simultaneously suggest the natural world and evoke the experience of sound. She was drawn to the theories of the Russian Expressionist painter Vasily Kandinsky, who, in his 1912 text Concerning the Spiritual in Art, argued that visual artists should emulate music in order to achieve pure expression free of literary references.

Status: On View, Gallery 271
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Georgia O'Keeffe
Title: Blue and Green Music
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: c. 1919–1921
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 58.4 × 48.3 cm (23 × 19 in.)
Credit Line: Alfred Stieglitz Collection, gift of Georgia O'Keeffe
Reference Number: 1969.835
Copyright: © The Art Institute of Chicago

Alfred Stieglitz Presents One Hundred Pictures: Oils, Water-colors, Pastels, Drawings by Georgia O’Keeffe, American, exh. cat. (The Anderson Galleries, 1923), no. 27.
Herbert J. Seligmann, “Why ‘Modern’ Art?”, Vogue, Oct. 15, 1923, 76–77 (ill.), as Music.
Frank Jewett Mather et al., “Georgia O’Keeffe”, in The American Spirit in Art vol. 12, The Pageant of America, ed. Ralph Henry Gabriel (Yale University Press, 1927), 155–78 (ill.), as Music – Blue and Black and Green.
James W. Lane and Leo Katz, The Work of Georgia O’Keeffe: a Portfolio of Twelve Paintings, (Knight Publishers, 1937), pl. 6 (ill.), as Music – Blue, Black and Green.
Sheldon Cheney, A Primer of Modern Art (Tudor Publishing Company, 1939), as Music Black Blue and Green.
Daniel Catton Rich and Mitchell A. Wilder, Georgia O’Keeffe, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 1943), 11, cat. 5 (ill.).
Milton W. Brown, American Painting from the Armory Show to the Depression (Princeton University Press, 1955), 126 (ill.).
Lloyd Goodrich and Doris Bry, Georgia O’Keeffe (Praeger, 1970), 32, cat. 23 (ill.).
Tate Gallery, Abstraction: Towards a New Art, Painting 1910–20, exh. cat. (Tate Gallery Publications, 1980), 118, 120, cat. 438 (ill.).
Charles C. Eldredge, Georgia O’Keeffe: American and Modern, exh. cat. (Yale University Press, 1993), cat. 21.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth–Century Painting and Sculpture, selected by James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein (Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), 46 (ill.).
Sharyn Rohlfsen Udall, O’Keeffe and Texas, exh. cat. (Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum/Harry N. Abrams), cat. 35.
Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 1 (National Gallery of Art; Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation; Yale University Press, 1999), no. 344.
Judith A. Barter, et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955 (Art Institute of Chicago, 2009), 102–104, cat. 35 (ill.).
Tanya Barson, ed., Georgia O’Keeffe, exh. cat. (Abrams, 2016), cat. 28.
Barbara Schaefer and Anita Hachmann, eds., Es war einmal in Amerika: 300 Jahre US-amerikanische Kunst [Once Upon a Time in America: Three Centuries of American Art], exh. cat. (Wienand Verlag, 2019), cat. 105.
Marta Ruiz del Árbol et al., Georgia O’Keeffe exh. cat. (Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2021), cat. 19 (ill.).

New York, The Anderson Galleries, Alfred Stieglitz Presents One Hundred Pictures: Oils, Water–colors, Pastels, Drawings by Georgia O’Keeffe, American, Mar. 3–16, 1923, no. 27.
Art Institute of Chicago, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jan. 21–Feb. 22, 1943, cat. 5.
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Georgia O’Keeffe, Oct. 8–Nov. 29, 1970, cat. 23; the Art Institute of Chicago, Jan. 1–Feb. 7, 1971; San Francisco Museum of Art, Mar. 15–Apr. 30, 1971.
London, Tate Gallery, Abstraction: Towards a New Art, Painting 1910–20, Feb. 5–Apr. 13, 1980, cat. 438.
London, Hayward Gallery, Georgia O’Keeffe: American and Modern, Apr. 8–June 22, 1993, cat. 21; Mexico City, Palacio de Bellas Artes, July 15–Oct. 1, 1993, Japan, Yokohama Museum of Art, Oct. 30, 1993–Jan. 16, 1994 (London and Mexico City only).
San Antonio, Texas, Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, O’Keeffe and Texas, Jan. 27–Apr. 5, 1998, no. 35.
Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Alfred Stieglitz and Modern Art in America, Jan. 28–Apr. 22, 2001.
Washington, DC, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Visual Music, 1905–2005; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Feb. 13–May 22, 2005, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, June 23–Sept. 11, 2005.
Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Sons et Lumières: A History of Sound in 20th Century Art , Sept. 22, 2004–Jan. 3, 2005.
Whitney Museum of American Art, Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction, Sept. 17, 2009–Jan. 17, 2010; Washington DC, Phillips Collection, Feb. 6–May 9, 2012; Santa Fe, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, May 28–Sept. 12, 2010 (New York only).
London, Tate Modern, Georgia O’Keeffe, July 6–Oct. 30, 2016; Vienna, Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien, Dec. 7, 2016–Mar. 26, 2017; Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario, Apr. 22–July 30, 2017 (London only) cat. 28.
Cologne, Germany, Wallraf–Richartz–Museum, Es war einmal in Amerika – 300 Jahre US–amerikanische Kunst [Once Upon a Time in America: Three Centuries of American Art], Nov. 23, 2018–Mar. 24, 2019, cat. 105.
Madrid, Museo Nacional Thyssen–Bornemisza, Georgia O’Keeffe, Apr. 20–Aug. 8, 2021, cat. 19 (ill.); Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, Sept. 8–Dec. 6, 2021; Basel, Fondation Beyeler, Jan. 23–May 22, 2022.

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), New York and New Mexico, then Abiquiú, NM, from 1949 [on loan to the Art Institute of Chicago from 1949; letter from Georgia O’Keeffe to Charles C. Cunningham, Dec. 9, 1969; copy in curatorial object file]; given through the Alfred Stieglitz Collection to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1969.

Lynes 1999 344

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