66
wiser or more philosophical than language.31 O’Keeffe must have been considering this
when she said in 1922, “Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of
expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing,
I paint.”32
O’Keeffe was a student at Columbia when she first considered the connection
between musical sound and visual art. She recalled late in her life:
I never took one of [Alon] Bement’s33 classes at Columbia University, but
one day walking down the hall I heard music from his classroom. Being
curious I opened the door and went in. A low-toned record was being
played and the students were asked to make a drawing from what they
heard. So I sat down and made a drawing too. Then he played a very
different kind of record—a sort of high soprano piece—for another quick
drawing. This gave me an idea that I was very interested to follow later—
the idea that music could be translated into something for the eye.34
Larsen points out that although O’Keeffe talks about musicality and how she
wanted to paint music, “she’s not painting figurative music: there are no notes, no
clefs.”35 However, there is a flow to her paintings that reflects the artist’s careful
consideration of the musical sound in the world around her.
Compositional Process
Katherine Hoffman, Georgia O ’Keeffe: A Celebration of Music and Dance (New
York: George Braziller, 1997), 16.
32
Ibid, 13.
33 Bement taught her about the revolutionary ideas of artist and art educator Arthur
Wesley Dow, who became a major influence in O’Keeffe’s work. Dow is widely
recognized as one of the founders of the Arts and Crafts movement in American art and
believed that paintings should be made up of elements of composition rather than
copying nature.
O’Keeffe, 14.
35
Larsen, interview, 8/2008.