In 1930 Georgia O’Keeffe witnessed a drought in the Southwest that resulted in the starvation of many animals, whose skeletons littered the landscape. She was fascinated by these bones and shipped a number of them back to New York City. She later wrote, “To me they are as beautiful as anything I know. To me they are strangely more living than the animals walking around… . The bones seem to cut more sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even tho’ it is vast and empty and untouchable—and knows no kindness with all its beauty.” The bones provided her with interesting shapes and textures, and she painted them frequently, intrigued as much by their symbolism as by their formal potential.
In Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses, O’Keeffe decorated the skull with artificial flowers, the kind used to adorn graves in New Mexico. Tucked against the ear and the jaw, the flowers appear less morbid than simply decorative—a whimsical addition that relies on the soft, ruffled petals to alleviate the hard, polished severity of the skull. O’Keeffe then exquisitely balanced the subtle modulations of the white and gray tones of the skull and flowers with a bold vertical streak of dark brown that irregularly bisects the composition. With the skull positioned against a muted, layered ground in close proximity to the picture plane, the composition conveys a sense of the organic yet abstracted beauty typical of O’Keeffe’s art.
Georgia O’Keeffe, James Warren Lane, and Leo Katz, The Work of Georgia O’Keeffe: A Portfolio of Twelve Paintings (Dial Press, 1939), n.p.
Daniel Catton Rich, Exhibition of Paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe,” Bulletin of The Art Institute of Chicago 37 (February 1943): p. 19.
–––––. “The Stieglitz Collection,” Bulletin of The Art Institute of Chicago, 18 (November 15, 1949): ill. front cover.
Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1961), 346.
Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 1 (National Gallery of Art/Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation/Yale University Press, 1999), no. 772.
Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), no. 68.
Roy Matthews, DeWitt Platt, and Thomas Noble, “Experience Humanities” (McGraw–Hill Higher Education, 2013), 8th edition, (ill.).
Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the Collection, (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2017), 117.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, American Painting and Sculpture, 1862–1932, Oct 31, 1932–Jan 31, 1933, cat. 76.
Art Institute of Chicago, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jan 21–Feb 22, 1943, cat. 45.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, History of an American: Alfred Stieglitz, 291 and After, Jul 1–Nov 1, 1944.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Exhibition of Georgia O’Keeffe, May 14–Aug 25, 1946, cat. 43.
Washington DC, National Gallery of Art, Georgia O’Keeffe: Art and Letters, Nov 1, 1987–Feb 21, 1988; Art Institute of Chicago, Mar 5–Jun 19, 1988; Dallas Museum of Art, Jul 31–Oct 16, 1988; Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nov 19, 1988–Feb 5, 1989, cat. 75.
Washington DC, Phillips Collection, Georgia O’Keeffe & Alfred Stieglitz: Two Lives, A Conversation in Paintings and Photographs, Dec 12, 1992–Apr 4, 1993, ill. p. 113; New York, IBM Gallery of Science and Arts, Apr 27– Jun 26, 1993; Minneapolis, Jul 17–Sep 12, 1993; Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, Oct 2–Dec 5, 1993.
Tokyo, ASAHI Shimbun, Masterworks of Modern Art from The Art Institute of Chicago; Nagaoka, Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Apr 20–May 29, 1994; Nagoya, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Jun 10–Jul 24, 1994; Yokohama Museum of Art, Aug 6–Sep 25, 1994.
Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries, Jan 28–Apr 22, 2001, cat. 174.
Milwaukee Art Museum, O’Keeffe’s O’Keeffes: The Artist’s Collection, May 5–Aug 19, 2001; Santa Fe, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Sep 14, 2001–Jan 13, 2002, cat. 56; Denmark, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Feb 8–May 20, 2002.
Art Institute of Chicago, America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s, Jun 5–Sep 18, 2016, cat. 38; Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie, Oct 15, 2016–Jan 30, 2017; London, Royal Academy, Feb 25–Jun 4, 2017 (Paris and London only).
Shanghai Museum, Pathways to Modernism: American Art, 1865–1945, Sep 28, 2018–Jan 6, 2019, cat. 56.
Given by the artist to the Art Institute of Chicago through the Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1947.
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