My friend Sandy has just taken off to Maui for three weeks and that got me thinking about my previous blog about Georgia O’Keeffe and my discovery during my research that she had been to Hawaii. Did you know she’d been to Hawaii??

 

This revelation came as a complete surprise to me. Previously I had associated her only with an early life in New York (in an earlier blog I reveal unbeknownst to me images of the city by O’Keeffe) and the rest of her life in New Mexico. There’s such a contrast between the widely recognized paintings of the arid landscape and open skies of the southwest and the almost unknown images of the lushness of the flowers, trees, mountains,  and rivers of the tropical islands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the summer of 1938, O’Keeffe was approached by the company handling the advertising for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (soon thereafter renamed the Dole Company). They offered her time on the Hawaiian Islands in exchange for two paintings to be used in a promotional campaign. She said yes on condition that she could paint anything. O’Keeffe was 51 and at a critical juncture in her career with critics calling her New Mexico paintings limited and ‘a kind of mass production’ so this opportunity opened up new possibilities for her.

 

 

 

Arriving on 8 February 1938, she spent nine weeks on four islands (Oahu, Maui, Kauai, and Hawaii) painting waterfalls, flowers, and fishhooks returning for home on 14 April 1939. But back in New York, she still had not fulfilled her obligation. Pulling through illness she finally painted and presented two canvases: one of a Heliconia flower, the other of papaya trees.

 

 

 

Evidently disappointed that there was no sign of a pineapple, the company had an entire plant shipped to her. O’Keeffe wrote, “It’s a beautiful plant…It is made up of long green blades and the pineapples grow on top of it. I never knew that.” (Early in her trip, O’Keeffe had wanted to stay on a pineapple plantation but was not allowed to because only fieldworkers lived there. To appease their guest, the company sent her what O’Keeffe referred to as a “manhandled” pineapple ie peeled, cored and sliced. After that, she didn’t look at a pineapple while there.) She did finish the second required painting and ads began appearing in magazines nationwide using the two paintings, “Pineapple Bud” and “Crab’s Claw Ginger”. Here’s a link to a wee bit more about the promotion.

 

 

 

 

 

Although O’Keeffe did a lot of painting in Hawaii, it is unknown which subjects she completed while there and which were done back in New York. On 1 February 1940, her solo exhibition at Stieglitz’s gallery opened and it included 20 canvases inspired by her trip to the tropics and these were reviewed favourably by critics. The whole thing was written up by Time magazine on 12 February 1940. In the article, O’Keeffe was curiously referred to as the “least commercial artist in the US.” I suppose they mentioned this in contrast to her foray into the commercial world of advertising.

 

O’Keeffe spent a good part of each year in New Mexico between 1929 and 1949. To put things in perspective, in 1940, the year she exhibited her Hawaiian images, she finally purchased a house at Ghost Ranch north of Abiqui, New Mexico, the place to which she is most associated.

 

Although these tropical paintings do contrast in their lush subject matter with her New Mexico ones, I am struck by the great similarity in their presentation and style. For instance the Heliconia and the fishhooks seen close up against a distant sea remind me of “Pelvis With Distance” and the closeup of the flowers are variations on earlier works such as the “Jack In The Pulpit IV”. There is also a similarity between that painting and the waterfalls. All are simplified to their very essence and it is only by looking closely and carefully that we can grasp the fullness of what is before us. In all her work, you can see the visual interconnectedness of life.

 

 

 

So, let me know if you knew about the paintings Georgia O’Keeffe did in Hawaii or if this is all as new to you as it is to me. It seems to me that it’s almost time I visited the Hawaiian islands. Certainly many of my friends love going there. If you haven’t been, here’s an article to whet your appetite.

 

As always, I look forward to hearing from you so feel free to shoot me a comment.

 

Thanks for accompanying me on my artistic travels,

 

~ Gail

 

PS. Much of my information and images came from the book, “Georgia O’Keeffe’s Hawai’i” by Patricia Jennings, Maria Ausherman, and Jennifer Saville.