Georgia O’Keeffe was fascinated by the animal bones, weathered and worn, that she found in the desert in New Mexico. In Red and Pink Rocks and Teeth she presented a jawbone alongside two stacked rocks that appear both monumental and indeterminate. The smooth, rounded forms of the red and pink rocks appear in enigmatic relation to one another, as the red pebble appears to recede from the picture plane even though it must be perched on top of the pink stone. Their abstracted forms and warm colors contrast sharply with the bleached, angular teeth and hard, cracked appearance of the jawbone and together construct a modern trompe l’oeil that questions the nature of representation and perception.
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.
Daniel Catton Rich, Georgia O’Keeffe, exh. cat. (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1943), 37, cat. 55 (ill.).
Jack Cowart, Juan Hamilton, and Sarah Greenough, Georgia O’Keeffe: Art and Letters, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987), cat. 95.
Barbara Buhler Lynes, Georgia O’Keeffe: Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art; Abiquiu, NM: Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), no. 945.
New York, An American Place, Georgia O’Keeffe: Exhibition of Oils And Pastels, Jan. 22–Mar. 17, 1939, checklist only, no. 16.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Art in Our Time: 10th Anniversary Exhibition, May 10–Sept. 30, 1939, checklist only, no. 199.
Art Institute of Chicago, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jan. 21–Feb. 22, 1943, cat. 55.
Washington DC, National Gallery of Art, Georgia O’Keeffe: Art and Letters, Nov. 1, 1987–Feb. 21, 1988, cat. 95; Art Institute of Chicago, Mar. 5–June 19, 1988; Dallas Museum of Art, July 31–Oct. 16, 1988; Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nov. 19, 1988–Feb. 5, 1989.
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), New York and New Mexico, 1938 [O’Keeffe moved permanently to New Mexico in 1949]; given through the Alfred Stieglitz Collection to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1955.
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