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for O Keefe's show Jan & Feb 1927 A PAINTER'S COMMENT At the outset, let us either meet or else let us part over the proposition, that to us Art, like Life, is not for the amusement, but for serious quest; that any painting 1) spiritually, is not worth the paint, unless it be a creative vision and a contemporary expression, somehow, of the artist's and spectator's attitude towards some supreme question; that painting 2) sensually, to us is paint meaning color and line meaning form. Assuming that we agree- or anyway- I submit that Georgia O'Keeffe is the [[margin]] Swindle [[/margin]] foremost x/ woman painter. She conceives a new problem, or perhaps, she rekindles with a modern spark the fires of a long forgotten worship. Although the field of Art, like that of Mind, is unlimited, we had not yet seen woman in art finding herself. And now O'Keeffe steps forth as artist- priestess of Eternal Woman,- I may say, as imaginative biologist of all creation- form on Earth; extending, perhaps, by way of analogies, the classical conception of Life- the Dionysian cult- beyond the confines of the human body. All nature seen as organic living flesh-form transposed into line and color surface throbbing with pulse line quivering with intense inner life rigorously restricted with corresponding significance. Color, not of dramatic duochrome contrast, nor triads denoting mysterious complex of musician or poet, but single color essentially felt, or at most, scales of related colors; one color to one line, one color and one line to one thought, one thought to one painting, a hundred paintings to a hundred different versions of one Idea. The Hellenic problem of form under the modern microscope, not the Rembrandt-Beethoven psychology of space. The human form and face as motifs avoided yet presented in every flower, tree, pebble, cloud, wall, hill, wave, thing. Surface-modelling now emulates vital process, express biological emotion. The brainy male brute of action owns the stage of historical cultures and his male instincts have shaped their responses to supreme questions, in art- while the Feminine Principle has only occasionally stepped out from its retreat behind the scenes, to lighten up an age, a race- mental suns long dormant way East or South. In this period of our woman's ascendancy we behold O'Keeffe's work flowering forth like a manifestation of that feminine causative principle, a painter's vision new, fascinating, virgin American. OSCAR BLUEMNER EXHIBITION 1927 OF GEORGIA O'KEEFFE THE INTIMATE CALLERY- ROOM 303 ANDERSON GALLERIES BUILDING 489 PARK AVE., NEW YORK, N.Y. x my original to [[?]] reads "American" woman painter. He suppressed it!
