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O. Keefe 1927 to McBr McBride The only copy I have (more is in the "Record" at home. See Stieglitz's letter to see on my "critical comment" Georgia O'Keeefe's Work Shown Henry McBride Fellow Painters of Little Group Become Fairly Lyrical Over it The Sun 1927 Forty new paintings by Georgia O'Keefe occupy the Intimate Gallery following close upon the heels of the John Marin show of water colors, which must be a phenomenal success. One of the Marin water colors sold for $6,000, which must be a record price for a work by a living man. In view of this happening the Intimate Gallery is held by some to be a lucky gallery, and great expectations, in consequence, have been aroused for the new show. To establish a record, however, Miss O'Keefe will have to go far beyond Mr. Marin's $6,000, for she works in oils, and the Princess Somebody who used to paint portraits in the Hotel Plaza long ago commanded $25,000 for her canvases. Miss O'Keefe belongs to a little group of American painters who admire each other very much and never hesitate to say so. Charles Demuth, himself a colorist of no mean repute, has this to say of Miss O'Keefe's use of color: "Flowers and flames. And color. Color as color, not as volume, or light- only as color. The last mad throb of red just as it turns green, the ultimate shriek of orange calling upon all the blues of heaven for relief or for support: these Georgia O'Keefe is able to use. In her canvases each color almost regains the fun it must have felt within itself on forming the first rainbow." Then there is Oscar Bluemner, who is such a he-artist that the colors in his pictures seem to have been welded together upon an anvil with blows from a mighty hammer, and how has [[bolded]] this to say: If You Get Me. "I submit that Georgia O'Keefe is the foremost 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'Keefe 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-Dionysian cult- beyond the confines of the human body. "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 principal has only occasionally stepped out from its retreat behind the scenes to lighten up and age, a race- mental suns long since dormant, way east or south. In this our period of woman's ascendancy we behold O'Keefe's work, flowering forth like a manifestation of that feminine causative principle, a painter's vision, new, fascinating, virgin America." Mr. Bluemner is a rather reckless stylist when it comes to writing, but at least you get what he means; and readers who recall the successes of Mme. Le Brun, Mary Cassatt and other famous women of the past will agree that he says a lot. [[strikethrough]] Marsden Hartley, who has also written of Miss O'Keefe's work, noticed the appealing feminine quality of the work. [[/strikethrough]] THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, JUNE 19, 1932. [[image]] "Last Evening of the Year," by Oscar Bluemer, in Summer Exhibition at Whitney Museum of American Art.
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