Sky Above Clouds

Sky Above Clouds (1960–1977) is a series of cloudscape paintings by American artist Georgia O'Keeffe made during her late period. The works were completed at her home and studio in Abiquiú and at her Ghost Ranch studio in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico. Only four paintings in the series share the same motif–a pink sky above the horizon with patches of cloudlets, or cloud streets below it,[1] progressing from smaller to larger canvases. The motif was inspired by views from her airplane window during her frequent air travel in the 1950s and early 1960s when she flew around the world. Sky above Clouds IV, the fourth version in the shared motif of the series, is two meters (eight feet) high and seven meters (24 feet) wide. It is the largest painting ever created by the artist, accomplished at the age of 77 in the summer of 1965.[2] Two of the paintings in the series are held by private collectors, while the rest are found in the National Gallery of Art, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

For musical works of the same name, see composers Elena Ruehr and Alex Burtzos.

Background
A Celebration (1924)

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) spent her early career as an artist in New York from 1918 through 1929.[3] By the late 1930s, she had become the most famous woman painter in the United States.[4] She married art dealer and photographer Alfred Stieglitz in 1924. His series of cloud photographs, known as the Equivalents (1925–1934), shows that O'Keeffe and her husband addressed similar subjects,[lower-greek 1] but had different approaches.[5] O'Keeffe's cloud painting A Celebration (1924), illustrates her early abstract potential.[6] In 1929, she began spending more time in New Mexico, with her cow skull paintings becoming some of her best known works during this period (Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue, 1931).[7] In 1934, she moved to Ghost Ranch and began working on landscape paintings of the desert. Her husband died in 1946, and in 1949, O'Keeffe moved permanently to the town of Abiquiú, where she had a second home as a studio. Here, she produced her famous patio series of paintings (In the Patio VIII, 1950) whose variations and abstractions would develop into her new series, Sky Above Clouds.[8]

The post-war aviation era began in the 1950s, and with it, what became known as the Jet Age,[9] bringing the reach of economical, commercial international travel by aircraft to more people. Writer Laurie Lisle notes that O'Keeffe had been born in 1886, in the era of the horse and buggy, and was only 16 years old when the Wright brothers made the first controlled powered airplane flights, and 37 when she moved into a skyscraper in New York.[10] Despite her fear of flying, O'Keeffe took advantage of this new experience and began to travel extensively outside the US at the age of 63, first to Mexico in 1951, Europe in 1953, followed by a trip to Peru in 1956, and finally around the world in 1959.[11]

In the 1950s, O'Keeffe's canvases grew larger, which was a style favored by the contemporaneous abstract expressionists. Although that style of art was popular, O'Keeffe's increasing use of larger sizes was more indicative of the larger world she was now exploring.[11] Her frequent trips on an airplane led to a change in her artistic perspective and viewpoint;[lower-greek 2] her work, which once focused on magnification of her subjects, now became telescopic, and emphasized the importance of the sky itself.[12] From these travel experiences came two new series of paintings based on high altitude views from an airplane: a series of river paintings, and a series showing the sky above the clouds.[13] Between the rivers and clouds series, O'Keeffe also worked on a series of roads, viewed not from above in an airplane, but from high on top of her Abiquiú studio on the mesa.[9]

In 1960, she wrote about the view outside her plane to her younger sister Claudia: "Now the sun is bright over what looks like a vast field of snow stretching all the way to the horizon..It is odd to look out on this field of snow or white cotton— It looks almost solid enough to walk on."[14] The Space Age, which began in 1958, was now well under way, with humanity orbiting around the Earth in just hours. "For O'Keeffe", writes Katherine Hoffman, "achievements in outer space were a way of living out man's dreams, an important achievement".[13] Just five years later, humans were taking their first walks in space, with Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov on the Voskhod 2 mission in March 1965, followed by astronaut Ed White on Gemini 4 in June. That same month, O'Keeffe began to explore the last version of this contemporaneous theme in a monumental work of art. "O'Keeffe released the sky from its earthly tether and concentrated on the effect of infinite space in her art", writes Drohojowska-Philp.[15]

Series

During her last productive period in her career, Georgia O'Keeffe completed a series of cloudscape paintings between 1960 and 1977. In the series, a set of four depict a variation on a view looking through clouds from above, as if seen from an airplane. An immense horizon is in the distance, with white clouds floating and receding below in some kind of order or pattern. The sky above is pink, turning into blue.[16]

Of this set of paintings in the series, the first three were completed in 1963, with the fourth, the largest painting by O'Keeffe ever made, completed in 1965.[17] O'Keeffe was extremely active for a woman in her late 70s, but she began having problems with her eyesight in 1968, eventually losing her central vision due to macular degeneration in 1971. She was left with limited peripheral vision, and continued working throughout the 1970s, and later into the 1980s with assistance from helpers.[18]

In her 1976 autobiography, O'Keeffe said she had a fear of flying, noting "I am afraid to fly—but after the plane takes off I enjoy what I see from the air and forget the hazards."[19] Geriatric psychiatrist Gene D. Cohen incorporated the paintings into his work and science communication and used it as a positive metaphor for aging.[20] "Among the clouds in her life that [O'Keeffe] confronted was her fear of flying", writes Cohen. "But after three-quarters of a century, she burst through these clouds, finding blue sky above them. She shows that in later life, there is not just a clouding up for many individuals, but there can also be sky above clouds."[21]

Sky Above the Flat White Cloud II
External image
image icon Sky Above the Flat White Cloud II, 1960-1964, oil on canvas, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

Sky Above the Flat White Cloud II was the first cloudscape in her overall series. It began as a sketch sometime after October 1960 while O'Keeffe was on a six week tour flying around the Asia-Pacific region, stopping over in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Fiji, Tahiti, Korea, the Philippines, and Hawaii.[22] It was completed in 1964. Art historian Lisa Messinger notes that the design of the painting follows the style of color field and minimalist painters. This was partly achieved by applying thin paint on a huge canvas with simple compositions making use of narrow strips of color at the top, leaving the bottom three-quarters white.[18]

In 1976, O'Keeffe again reminisced about what got her started on the painting and the series: "One day when I was flying back to New Mexico, the sky below was a most beautiful solid white. It looked so secure that I thought I could walk right out on it to the horizon if the door opened. The sky beyond was a light clear blue. It was so wonderful that I couldn't wait to be home to paint it. I couldn't find a canvas the right size so it was painted on one I had—one that was too high and not wide enough."[23] The painting was gifted to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in 2006.[24]

Sky with Flat White Cloud
External image
image icon Sky with Flat White Cloud, 1962, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art

Sky with Flat White Cloud, also known as Sky above White Clouds I, is an abstract, 1962 painting that was inspired by her trip to Egypt in the spring of that year. The canvas is horizontal, showing blue and green stripes of color (the sky) at the top, while two-thirds of the portion below (the clouds) is white. While abstract, O'Keeffe insisted it was close to photographic quality, as it was almost identical to what she saw outside her airplane window: "Usually, what I paint is something that I see. There was a line around the whole horizon. It was an extraordinary effect. Here was this great white field of clouds solid against the blue."[25]

The painting is a minimalist work that reduces the sky and clouds to distinct planes of color. Minimalism was a popular genre for young artists in the 1960s. O'Keeffe herself compared Sky above White Clouds I to the then-current work of American artist Kenneth Noland. Compositionally, art historian Richard D. Marshall believed the painting was related to the work of Mark Rothko, specifically abstract paintings like No. 5/No. 22 (1950).[26] Sky above White Clouds I was shown at her retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in 1971, followed by the Art Institute of Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Art. It was bequested by O'Keeffe to the National Gallery of Art and entered their collection in 1987.[27]

Above the Clouds I
External image
image icon Above the Clouds I, 1962-1963, oil on canvas, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

Above the Clouds I, also referred to as Sky Above Clouds I,[28] is the first of a series of four paintings with a shared motif showing a view through the clouds. It is one of the smallest in the series (36 1/8 x 48 1/4 in.) with the clouds appearing distinct and puffy; the brush strokes of the artist are visible.[17] O'Keeffe wrote about how she changed her approach to the series with this painting. "The next time I flew, the sky below was completely full of little oval white clouds, all more or less alike. The many clouds were more of a problem. The first painting was small—the next two were larger."[23] Messinger describes the finished product as more of a working sketch than a completed work, as the brushwork was rough, with portions of the canvas left unpainted around the clouds.[29] The painting was shown at the Brandeis University Creative Arts exhibition at the American Federation of Arts Gallery in New York in 1963.[30] It was acquired by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in 1997.[31]

Sky Above Clouds II
External image
image icon Sky Above White Clouds II, 1963, oil on canvas, private collection

Sky Above Clouds II was exhibited (along with I and III) at the touring retrospective of her work at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1971, followed by the San Francisco Museum of Art from March 19 to April 25, 1971.[32] The exhibition at the Whitney led to its sale to a private collector.[33] American classical composer Marga Richter based her Concerto No. 2, Landscapes of the Mind I for piano and orchestra on this painting and O'Keeffe's earlier work, Pelvis I (1944). After seeing the paintings in a March 1968 issue of Life magazine,[lower-greek 3] Richter began composing the piece."I read an article about Georgia O'Keeffe which included tiny little pictures of two of her paintings", Richter recalls. "I literally took one look at Sky Above Clouds II and was so inspired by its gentle floating quality that I immediately went to the piano and wrote the opening of what became my piano concerto...I thought the title of my concerto was my own invention, but in 1976, at the time of the premiere, I reread the Life magazine article and found that the author had written, 'O'Keeffe's paintings could be considered landscapes of the mind.'"[34] Architect Steven Holl pointed to Richter's piece and O'Keeffe's painting as inspiration for the 1987-1988 interior redesign of the carpets in an apartment of the 68 story Metropolitan Tower building in Midtown Manhattan. Holl described the unit as a "floating cloud-like habitat...in the evaporative dream state above the metropolis".[35]

Above the Clouds III

Above the Clouds III, also known as Sky Above Clouds III, was first exhibited (along with the large IV) at the fifty year retrospective of O'Keeffe's work at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art from March 17 to May 8, 1966.[36] The Amon Carter exhibition led to its sale to a private collector.[37]

Sky above Clouds IV
External image
image icon Sky above Clouds IV, 1965, oil on canvas, The Art Institute of Chicago

Sky above Clouds IV, also known as Above the Clouds IV, is O'Keeffe's largest work in her oeuvre, and the last of a series of four cloudscape paintings with a shared motif. Her autobiography, Georgia O'Keeffe (1976), documents the story behind the creation and exhibition of the painting.[38] She began working on it in June 1965.[39] O'Keeffe's unheated Ghost Ranch double garage was converted into a studio to accommodate the eight by twenty-four foot canvas.[40]

The preparation of the large canvas required two people, O'Keefe and her helper Frank Martinez, a native of Abiquiú. It took four days for the both of them to stretch the canvas,[41] as their first attempt failed, necessitating the use of steel strips to hold the stretchers together. To paint it, O'Keeffe constructed platforms to reach the canvas at its highest point, working seven days a week from six in the morning until nine at night without heat, making sure to finish it before the weather got cold.[38] Because the garage was open, O'Keeffe was worried about rattlesnakes attacking her from behind as she worked on the bottom edges while lying on the ground.[42] The painting took the entire summer for her to complete.[15]

The painting was shown under the title Above the Clouds IV at a retrospective exhibition of 95 of her paintings (96 total) at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (ACMAA) in Fort Worth, Texas, from March 17 to May 8, 1966.[43] In 1970, the work was also shown at a gallery in Los Angeles with a asking price of $75,000, but it did not sell.[15] The painting appeared in her retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York that same year, followed by The Art Institute of Chicago. At the Whitney, the painting was too large to be hung anywhere but the first floor of the gallery. It was also too large for the San Francisco Museum of Art, so the work remained in Chicago.[44] Art historian Barbara Rose called the painting "the most original of O'Keeffe's outer-space paintings, with space itself as the subject".[45] Scholar Linda M. Grasso described it as "the apotheosis of O'Keeffe's career".[38] The painting was gifted to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1983.[46]

Sky Above Clouds / Yellow Horizon and Clouds

O'Keeffe returned to this series in the 1970s with Sky Above Clouds / Yellow Horizon and Clouds (1976-1977), which is similar to her 1962 painting Sky with Flat White Cloud. It was gifted to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in 2006.[47]

Works
  • Sky Above the Flat White Cloud II, 1960–1964. Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 101.6 cm (30 x 40 in.) Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. CR 1460
  • An Island with Clouds, 1962. Oil on canvas, 23 x 32 in. Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. CR 1472
  • Sky with Flat White Cloud (Sky Above White Clouds I), 1962. Oil on canvas, 152.4 x 203.2 cm (60 x 80 in.) National Gallery of Art. CR 1473
  • Above the Clouds I, 1962–1963. Oil on canvas, 91.8 x 122.6 cm (36 1/8 x 48 1/4 in.) Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. CR 1474
  • Sky Above Clouds II, 1963. Oil on canvas, 48 x 84 in. Private collection[33] CR 1478
  • Sky Above Clouds III (Above the Clouds III), 1963. Oil on canvas, 48 x 84 in. Private collection[33] CR 1479
  • Clouds 5/ Yellow Horizon and Clouds, 1963–1964. Oil on canvas, 121.9 X 213.4 cm (48 x 84 in.) Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. CR 1484
  • Sky Above Clouds IV (Sky above Clouds IV), 1965. Oil on canvas, 243.8 × 731.5 cm (96 × 288 in.) Art Institute of Chicago. CR 1498
  • Sky Above Clouds / Yellow Horizon and Clouds, 1976–1977. Oil on canvas, 48 x 84 inches. Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. CR 1618

Notes and references

Notes

  1. Messinger 1984, pp. 17-18: "More difficult to assess is the extent to which O'Keeffe and Stieglitz influenced each other’s work. Their subjects are often similar, but their approaches seem vastly different…Both explored the multiple possibilities of a subject in a thematic series, reworking compositions in order to discover the ultimate solution."
  2. See the overview effect for an analogous cognitive shift. See Messinger 2001, p. 160. O'Keeffe: "What we see from the air is so simple and beautiful I cannot help feeling that it would do something wonderful for the human race—rid it of much smallness and pettiness if more people flew."
  3. See Seiberling 1968.

References

  1. Kennicott & Cappucci 2021.
  2. Messinger 1997, pp. 44-45; Novak 1997, pp. 80, 84; Rose 1997, pp. 107-108, 134; Eldredge 1997, p. 140.
  3. Messinger 2001, p. 15.
  4. Lisle 1997, p. 306-307.
  5. Messinger 1984, p. 18.
  6. Marshall 2007, p. 25.
  7. Messinger 2001, p. 125.
  8. Seiberling 1968, p. 52; Messinger 2001, p. 156-157.
  9. Eldredge 1993, p. 208-209.
  10. Lisle 1997, p. 375.
  11. Messinger 2001, p. 158.
  12. Robinson 1999, pp. 489-483.
  13. Messinger 2001, p. 58-160; Hoffman 1984, p. 48-50.
  14. Robinson 1999, p. 499.
  15. Drohojowska-Philp 2005, pp. 492-493.
  16. Hoffman 1984, p. 118; Robinson 1999, p. 500.
  17. Hoffman 1984, p. 118.
  18. Messinger 2001, p. 173-180.
  19. O'Keeffe 1976, n.p., p. 201.
  20. Miller & Cohen 2016, pp. xvi, 176.
  21. Cohen 1997, pp. 2-3.
  22. Drohojowska-Philp 2005, p. 479.
  23. O'Keeffe 1976, n.p., p. 208-209.
  24. O'Keeffe 1960-1964.
  25. Drohojowska-Philp 2005, p. 483-484.
  26. Marshall 2007, p. 17.
  27. Eldredge 1993, pp. 149, 208-210, 225.
  28. Messinger 1997, pp. 44, 134.
  29. Messinger 1997, pp. 44-45.
  30. Bencks 2016.
  31. O'Keeffe, 1962-1963.
  32. Crawford 1971, p. 1, 8.
  33. Cowart et al. p. 118-119; Bowman et al. pp. 45, 48.
  34. Mirchandani 2012, pp. 57, 68-69.
  35. Holl 1989, p. 117.
  36. Wilder 1966, p. 30.
  37. Bowman et al. pp. 45, 48.
  38. Grasso 2017, pp. 180-181, 275.
  39. Eldredge 1993, p. 36.
  40. Turner 1999, p. 119.
  41. Lisle 1997, pp. 383-384.
  42. O'Keeffe 1976, n.p., pp. 208-209; Lisle 1997, pp. 383-384.
  43. Wilder 1966, p. 30; O'Keeffe 1976, n.p., pp. 212-213; Cowart et al. p. 294.
  44. Hoffman 1984, p. 50.
  45. Rose 1997, p. 107.
  46. Wrathall 2019.
  47. O'Keeffe 1976-1977.

Bibliography
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