Light

Dan Budnik
American, 1933–2020
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Chows, Abiquiú, New Mexico
1964
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 2006.6.1356. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Photographer Dan Budnik is known for his insightful and revealing portraits of artists. O’Keeffe appreciated Budnik’s work and invited him to her home several times. Here, her chow chows—Jango and Inca II — are seen with stones O’Keeffe collected. Budnik’s composition echoes the relationships of shape and texture that O’Keeffe explored in her own work. His photographs of O’Keeffe and her world underscored her unique sensibilities.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Dark Rocks
1938
Oil paint on canvas
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: Gift of Patricia Barrett Carter, 98.648. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

The painting Dark Rocks exemplifies O’Keeffe’s talent for abstracting natural forms. Her rendering of stacked rocks includes precisely placed areas of highlight and shadow. These formal elements result in an ambiguous relationship between positive and negative space. This play of depth and weight is also evident in O’Keeffe’s photographs of her chow chows, which she rendered in her art as round, abstracted forms much like these rocks.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Untitled (Dog)
1952
Graphite on paper
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 2006.5.233. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

O’Keeffe owned eight chow chows over the course of more than 20 years. She received her first two chow chows, Bo and Chia, in 1951. O’Keeffe often described the dogs in formal terms. She wrote to her sister Claudia, “I have two new chow puppies—half grown… not quite blue and against the half snow has a frosty color—very pretty.”

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Bo II (Bo-Bo)
1961
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1350. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

O’Keeffe appreciated her dogs’ dark fur in contrast to the bright New Mexico environment and their ambiguous shape when they lay curled up. In this photograph, Bo II (also known as Bo-Bo) rests on a sun-bleached tree trunk outside the artist’s studio door. The physical and tonal proximity of the dog’s form to the ladder’s shadow presents the chow almost as a shadow itself—a negative space without depth or weight.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
In the Patio VIII
1950
Oil paint on canvas
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Gift of the Burnett Foundation and the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 1997.5.8. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

In the Patio VIII depicts the interior courtyard of O’Keeffe’s Abiquiú home. The architecture is not defined by any detailed representation of the adobe walls or dirt floor. Instead, a dark, angular shadow cuts across the courtyard, creating a dramatic contrast with the sunlit walls and bright blue sky. With these minimal shapes, O’Keeffe creates a sense of three dimensions.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Skull, Ghost Ranch
1961–72
Chromogenic print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1446b. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

O’Keeffe shared her photographs with family and friends, often mailing prints with handwritten notes on the back. For the artist, these photographs provided her friends with glimpses of her home and artistic world. Skull, Ghost Ranch was printed multiple times. On the back of one of the prints, O’Keeffe handwrote to an unknown acquaintance, “Another present this is. It is beside the Studio door. Pretty isn’t it!”

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Goat’s Head
1957
Oil paint on canvas}
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio: Gift of the Estate of Tom Slick, 1973.34. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Skulls were a favorite subject for O’Keeffe, appearing in her paintings from the 1930s until the 1960s and in her photographs until the 1970s. In Goat’s Head, O’Keeffe painted the animal skull against alternating planes of light and shadow, suggesting a retreating desert landscape. The careful cropping of the composition, like a photograph, unites the forms of the skull and landscape, encouraging a comparison of bone and background.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Salita Door
1956–57
Gelatin silver print
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, 2006.6.1407. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

One of O’Keeffe’s first photographs of her New Mexico home was of the salita (sitting room) door in her Abiquiú courtyard. In this image, the organic, adobe wall is broken by the dark rectangle of the door. A long, sleek shadow cuts diagonally through the frame, and a silvery sagebrush fills the bottom left corner. Using photography, O’Keeffe carefully and beautifully rendered one of the most iconic motifs of her world.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Salita Door, Patio
1956–57
Gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Anonymous Gift, 1977, 1977.657.4. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

This door separates the central patio from the salita, or sitting room, which O’Keeffe used as a workroom and storage space for her paintings. The door can be seen as a physical and metaphorical link between her home and her art. “I’m always trying to paint that door—I never quite get it,” O’Keeffe wrote.

Georgia O’Keeffe
American, 1887–1986
Untitled (Abstraction)
1959–60
Graphite on paper
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe: Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 2006.5.302. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

O’Keeffe’s conception of shadows as formal elements can be seen in a drawing of what O’Keeffe called her “Roofless Room.” In this graphite rendering, the shadows are outlined in the same way as the wooden vigas (joists) and door, giving both shadow and form equal treatment and weight.