CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/26/2021

New ways of thinking and seeing for a new year

"Series I – No. 3" (1918) is reproduced from Georgia O’Keeffe, the catalog to the major survey opening at Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, in January 2022. Featuring 245 superb reproductions alongside a substantial biography and scholarly texts, this is essential reading for every serious art library, collector or lover of Modernist painting. “O’Keeffe’s interest in the idea of creating a visual equivalent of music in painting was one she shared with a number of artists she associated with, such as Marsden Hartley, Max Weber and Arthur Dove, as well as [Alfred] Stieglitz,” the editors write. “Her synesthetic designs of 1919 were consistent with the new aesthetic concerns of American modernity. Musical performances with projections of light were in vogue in New York at the time and O’Keeffe owned a book of theories on the subject. However, her interest was first aroused whilst studying with Arthur Wesley Dow in 1916. She remembered vividly: ‘Walking down the hall of Columbia University Art Department, I heard music. Being curious, I opened the door and went in. The instructor was playing a low-toned record, asking the class to make a charcoal drawing from it. So I sat down and made a drawing too.’ This experience ‘gave me an idea that I was very interested to follow—the idea of lines like sounds.’”