Music for the Eyes: A New Georgia O’Keeffe Experience

About the Experience

Music for the Eyes: A New Georgia O’Keeffe Experience was exclusively at Electric Playhouse on Friday, September 30, 2022 through Sunday, November 27 with a reprise at the end of the year. Music for the Eyes leads viewers through O’Keeffe’s creative process, diving into the mind and inspirations of one of the world’s most iconic and revered artists. Featuring large-scale digital projections, interactive displays, and animation of O’Keeffe artworks, this limited-run exhibit will be a can’t-miss experience for all audiences. 

Introduction

Later in life, Georgia O’Keeffe recalled the experience of an instructor who played different types of music, asking the students to let it inspire their drawing. O’Keeffe recalled:

“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.”

Drawing from O’Keeffe’s inspiration, this immersive experience—Music for the Eyes— explores key moments in Georgia O’Keeffe’s development of her highly personal style.

Orientation Experience

The Music for the Eyes experience begins with a 12-minute immersive orientation in 5 chapters featuring interpretations of her works as you’ve never seen them before.

Music featured in this orientation experience can be listened to on the following playlist:

Music selected by Chris Alires in collaboration with the Museum team.

Georgia O’Keeffe is one of the most recognized artists of the 20th century. As a leading figure in the development of modern art, she was one of the first painters anywhere to embrace the idea of abstraction. In her paintings and works on paper, natural forms dissolve into expressive shapes, lines, and colors.

Chapter 1: Materials as Language

Georgia O’Keeffe received a traditional arts education in Chicago, Virginia, and New York. By 1915, when she was in her late twenties, she was struggling to find her own voice in her art and for a time stepped away from painting. The following year she decided to start anew, setting aside her training and exploring new modes of expression in radically abstract charcoal drawings she called ‘Specials’.

I found that I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say in any other way—things I had no words for.

—Georgia O’Keeffe

Chapter 2: Wideness and Wonder

In 1916 Georgia O’Keeffe took a teaching position in west Texas where she found beauty and wonder in the vastness of the canyons and plains. Her work of this period includes a series of watercolors using techniques that utilized sharp controlled lines contrasted with areas where the colors blend more freely.

Charcoal drawing by Georgia O'Keeffe that features curling tendrils that seem to erupt into an eye fountain
Georgia O’Keeffe. No. 2 Special, 1915. Charcoal on medium thick, cream, moderately textured laid paper. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.
Georgia O’Keeffe. No. 14 Special, 1916. Charcoal on medium thick, cream, moderately textured laid paper. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.
A Charcoal on paper drawing that features blob like forms dripping down the page and swirling swoops around the tube forms.
Georgia O’Keeffe. No. 5 Special, 1915. Charcoal on medium thick, cream, moderately textured laid paper. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Special No. 9, 1915. Charcoal on paper, 24 ¾ × 19 in. Menil Collection.

The wind is careless — uncertain — I like the wind — it seems more like me than anything else — I like the way it blows things around roughly — even meanly — then the next minute seems to love everything.

—Georgia O’Keeffe

Very small vertical watercolor of a windmill and its tower on the right, with a large cumulus cloud in the middle of the washed blue sky.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Untitled (Windmill), 1916. Watercolor and graphite on paper, 4 3/4 x 3 5/8 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.
Small horizontal watercolor of windmills, two of which are situated on the right. The darker one in the foreground has a water tower beneath it. The second windmill on the right is much lighter and smaller in the background. On the left is the silhouette of another windmill in the distance with the suggestion of buildings behind it. All on a yellow ground with large cumulus cloud in the middle left.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Untitled (Windmills), 1916. Watercolor and graphite on paper, 3 5/8 x 4 3/4 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.

…it was like the ocean but it was wide, wide land. The evening star would be high in the sunset sky when it was still broad daylight. That evening star fascinated me. I had nothing but to walk into nowhere and the wide sunset space with the star.

—Georgia O’Keeffe

Circular patterns; one with yellow with cream colored dot and red horizontal tail with two blue horizontal waves below.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Evening star No. IV, 1917. Watercolor on paper, 8 7/8 x 12 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.
Horizontal watercolor with yellow circle in upper left corner, surrounded by a larger partial circle in vibrant red. The rest of the page is filled out with red, and a stripe of dark blue along the bottom edge.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Evening Star No. VI, 1917. Watercolor on paper, 8 7/8 x 12 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.
Watercolor of a reddish sky dominated by the glow of a star, over a dark blue landscape. The entire pictorial surface is filled with bleeding bands of fluid blue and red hues, which radiate outward from a pale yellow star in the upper left of the composition.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Evening Star No. VII, 1917. Watercolor on paper, 8 7/8 x 11 7/8 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.

…a train that I watched like a star on the horizon—it’s great to watch it moving such a long time—it never came close enough to be anything but a little line…

—Georgia O’Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe. Train at Night in the Desert. 1916. Watercolor and pencil on paper. 11 7/8 x 8 7/8″ (30.3 x 22.5 cm). Acquired with matching funds from the Committee on Drawings and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Chapter 3: New Perspectives New York

New York in the 1920s was a bustling metropolis brimming with new ideas in art, architecture, music, and literature. Georgia O’Keeffe was at the center of this creative energy and became one of the most talked about artists in the country.

I had never lived up so high before and was so excited that I began talking about trying to paint New York. I was told that it was an impossible idea—even the men hadn’t done too well with it..

—Georgia O’Keeffe
A nocturne painting of a tall cylindrical stacked skyscraper in black shadow with various floors of illuminated windows. Visible behind the Ritz Tower, is a darkened sky with a channel of horizontal flowing clouds in blue and white which partially obscure the moon.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Ritz Tower, 1928. Oil on canvas, 40 1/4 x 14 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Museum Purchase.
Radiator Building is O’Keeffe’s grandest statement on New York City. She depicted the skyscraper, located in Midtown Manhattan, lit from within and without by a variety of electric light. Round streetlamps and glowing rectangular windows form an abstract pattern, while a diagonal beam from a spotlight adds a sense of movement. O’Keeffe’s low point of view and central placement of the building provides a sense of awe, demonstrating the skyscraper’s role as a symbol of modern America in the 1920s.
Georgia O’Keeffe .Radiator Building—Night, New York, 1927. Oil on canvas, 48 × 30 in. Crystal Bridges. Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Co-owned by Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas.
Georgia O’Keeffe. New York, Night, 1928/1929. Oil on canvas, 40 1/8 × 19 3/16 in. Sheldon Museum of Art. Nebraska Art Association, Thomas C. Woods Memorial.

Chapter 4: The Universe in a Flower

Georgia O’Keeffe is perhaps best known for her evocative paintings of flowers. Using vibrant colors and simplified shapes, O’Keeffe played with scale by zooming in closely to provide unexpected perspectives. O’Keeffe’s flower compositions both confused and titillated critics in the male-dominated art scene of the time who read sexual and anatomical references into the paintings, but the artist persisted to follow her own path regardless of how others interpreted her work.

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else.

—Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe. Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV, 1930. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Bequest of Georgia O’Keeffe.
In this particular work, the plant is set against a pale mauve background, and all four corners of the composition are occupied by green foliage.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Jack-in-Pulpit – No. 2, 1930. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Bequest of Georgia O’Keeffe.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Black Hollyhock Blue Larkspur, 1930. Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 40 in. Extended loan.

Chapter 5: Abstract Landscapes

In 1929, during a particularly difficult time in her life, Georgia O’Keeffe took a trip to Taos, New Mexico, 140 miles north of Albuquerque. This trip provided a much needed get-away from New York and served to stimulate her creativity. She began making annual trips to New Mexico and made the state her full time home in 1949. As she had been in west Texas, O’Keeffe was fascinated by the varied landscapes of the Southwest.

The unexplainable thing in nature that makes me feel the world is big far beyond my understanding—to understand maybe by trying to put it into form. To find the feeling of infinity on the horizon line or just over the next hill.

—Georgia O’Keeffe
Horizontal landscape of dark reddish crimson clay hills that flow down into softly rounded smaller hills below. The smaller hills are a lighter pink tinged with grey at the tops.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Purple Hills Ghost Ranch – 2 / Purple Hills No II, 1934. Oil on canvas, 16 1/4 x 30 1/4 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.
Panoramic horizontal landscape with purple-black hills in the background, blending to sand beige hills in the middle, ending in creamy white just above the line of green trees along the bottom.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Back of Marie’s No. 4, 1931. Oil on canvas, 16 x 30 inches Framed Dimensions: 17 5/16 x 31 5/16 x 1 15/16 (6/6/16). Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.
Horizontal landscape with blue peaks in the background, black and pure ground. Along the bottom edge is a strip of green foliage and trees.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie’s II, 1930. Oil on canvas, 24 1/4 x 36 1/4 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.

Outro

I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life – and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.

—Georgia O’Keeffe

Title Wall

Georgia O’Keeffe. No. 22 – Special, 1916-1917. Oil on board, 13 1/8 x 17 1/4 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation and The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.

Souvenir Moment

While visiting Taos, New Mexico in 1929, Georgia O’Keeffe (on right) with her friend and travel companion Rebecca Strand (on left) had this tintype portrait souvenir made as a memento of their visit.

Unknown photographer. Rebecca Salsbury James and Georgia O’Keeffe, 1929. tintypes (prints). Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation Photographs. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.
he viewer appears to be looking at the canyon from an unusual angle, perhaps from below. The image could also be the reflection of the cliffs on the surface of the river. Cliffs rise from all sides, and a triangular patch of light sky fills the center of the image.
Georgia O’Keeffe. On the River I, ca. 1965. Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 40 1/16 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. [2006.5.392]

Ram’s Head Flower Fun

In this surreal image, a ram’s skull and single hollyhock blossom assume monumental presence, floating mysteriously against cloudy skies and above a sweeping, undulant landscape that makes up the immediate foreground. Georgia O’Keeffe first traveled to New Mexico in 1929; soon thereafter she began collecting animal skulls and bones, motifs to which she returned repeatedly throughout her career. This painting marked a new direction for O’Keeffe’s evolving modernist style when it was exhibited in 1936 at photographer Alfred Stieglitz’s New York–based gallery, An American Place.
Georgia O’Keeffe (American, 1887-1986). Ram’s Head, White Hollyhock-Hills (Ram’s Head and White Hollyhock, New Mexico), 1935. Oil on canvas, 30 x 36in. (76.2 x 91.4cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Edith and Milton Lowenthal.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Untitled (Hibiscus), 1939. Oil on canvas, 18 7/8 x 15 7/8 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.
Oil on canvas of Ram's Skull Head and Blue Morning Glory on the proper left side of horn.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Ram’s Head, Blue Morning Glory, 1938. Oil on canvas, 20 x 30 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.

Octagon

Georgia O’Keeffe. Jack-in-Pulpit Abstraction No. 5, 1930. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Bequest of Georgia O’Keeffe.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Corn, No. 2, 1924. Oil on canvas, 27 1/4 x 10 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation and The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Canna Leaves, 1925. Oil on canvas, 26 x 11 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Pond in the Woods, 1922. Pastel on paper, 24 x 18 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Series I – From the Plains, 1919. Oil on canvas, 27 7/16 x 23 1/2 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Skunk Cabbage, 1922. Oil on canvas, 18 x 14 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (Santa Fe), Gift of The Burnett Foundation.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Dark Abstraction, 1924. Oil on canvas. Saint Louis Art Museum. The Saint Louis Art Museum, Gift of Charles E. and Mary Merrill.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Red Maple, 1922. Oil on canvas, 25 x 20 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.

Watercolor Reveal

Georgia O’Keeffe. Three women, 1918. Watercolor and graphite on paper, 8 7/8 x 6 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of Gerald & Kathleen Peters.

Island

Georgia O’Keeffe. Black Lava Bridge, Hana Coast, No. I, 1939. Oil on canvas. Honolulu Museum of Art. Honolulu Academy of Arts, Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 1994.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Papaw Tree, Iao Valley, Maui, 1939. Oil on canvas. Honolulu Museum of Art. Honolulu Academy of Arts, Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 1994.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Waterfall – No. 1 –  Īao Valley – Maui. 1939. Oil on canvas, 19 1/8 x 16 in. Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Waterfall, No. III, ‘Iao Valley. Oil on canvas, 19 × 16 in. Honolulu Museum of Art.


Georgia O’Keeffe. Waterfall—End of Road—’Iao Valley, 1939. Oil on Canvas, 24 1/4 × 20 in. Honolulu Museum of Art.

Slow Looking

“…to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”
—Georgia O’Keeffe

Explore the idea of “slow looking” in this experience which re-imagines three artworks created in New Mexico between 1944 and 1950.

Original music composition: Basinski by Chris Alires.

Georgia O’Keeffe. Pelvis IV, 1944. Oil on Masonite, 36 1/16 x 40 3/8 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Pedernal, 1945. Pastel on paper, 21 1/2 x 43 1/4 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Red Hills and Sky, 1945. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift from the Estate of Mrs. Eugene McDermott.
Georgia O’Keeffe. In the Patio VIII, 1950. Oil on canvas, 26 x 20 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation and The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.

Color Cards

Starting around 1923, O’Keeffe began making small canvas-covered color cards which she used as a visual reference in composing her paintings. Each card was painted a different color, some inscribed with notes in the artist’s hand.

Vertical canvas with center stylized grey tree - limbs and trunk spreading out and upwards into reddish, grey and some greenish blended color of arching planes.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Autumn Trees – The Maple, 1924. Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation and Gerald and Kathleen Peters.
Vertical canvas with cloudy blue, green, and cream colored formation filling the bottom half of the painting. Hovering over this in a black background is a foggy streak of red. The upper half of the canvas is traversed by a lightening bolt zig-zag shape in greenish white that cuts through the blue-black of the background.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Series I – From the Plains, 1919. Oil on canvas, 27 7/16 x 23 1/2 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.
This work is painted from the point of view of one who is actually on the road as it ascends a slight hill. Pedernal lies directly ahead in the center of the work.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Road to Pedernal, 1941. Oil on canvas, 6 1/8 x 10 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.

Landscape

A relatively flat landscape fills the lower half of the canvas. Several small shrubs and trees dot the land, and one larger tree grows directly in the center of the work. Pedernal rises in the central distance
Georgia O’Keeffe. Ghost Ranch Landscape, ca. 1936. Oil on canvas, 12 x 30 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of Jerome M. Westheimer, Sr.
Horizontal graphite drawing of Abiquiu landscape.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Abiquiu Mesa II, 1944-1945. Graphite on paper, 5 5/8 x 17 7/16 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation and The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.
Loose watercolor with bands of horizontal colors: a strip of muddy brown along the bottom, layered above with a bleeding line of reddish to yellow in the middle. Above it turns to purplish-blue dotted with scattered orange areas as if small clouds.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Sunrise and Little Clouds No. II, 1916. Watercolor on paper, 8 7/8 x 12 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation.
The painting conveys a simplified rendering of a patio. A light brown stripe runs along the lower portion of the scene. The building is painted in a slightly darker brown, while a square opening in the center of the building is an even deeper shade of brown. A strip of blue sky parallels the upper edge of the canvas.
Georgia O’Keeffe. In the Patio III, 1948. Oil on canvas, 18 x 30 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.

Look Closer

“…one rarely takes the time to really see a flower.  l have painted what each flower is to me and I have painted it big enough so that others would see what I see.” —Georgia O’Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe played with scale by “zooming in” and allowing a composition to seemingly extend beyond the canvas. This type of framing was influenced by the emergence of photography as an art form in the early 20th century.

Two large swirling white flowers, one atop the other. The interior of the bottom flower is visible, yet the top flower is tilted upward hiding it's center. The two flowers fill the majority of the canvas, with a sliver of blue - perhaps an ocean horizon line along the top.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Bella Donna, 1939. Oil on canvas, 36 1/4 x 30 1/8 in. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Extended loan, private collection.
Georgia O’Keeffe
Black Hollyhock Blue Larkspur, 1930. Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 40 in. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Three white lilies with yellow centers surround red Indian paintbrush flowers. A sprig of greenery is visible in the background.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Mariposa Lilies and Indian Paintbrush, 1941. Oil on canvas, 10 x 14 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.
This small painting is comprised of three zinnias in front of a gray-blue background. The zinnia on the left is a soft pink color, and it has a yellow center. The middle flower is white and also has a yellow center. The zinnia on the right is a darker pink around its edges with lighter pink highlights. Its center is not visible.
Georgia O’Keeffe. 3 Zinnias, 1921. Oil on canvas, 6 x 8 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.
Georgia O’Keeffe. White Bird of Paradise, 1939. Oil on canvas, 19 x 16 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of Jean Holmes McDonald. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
Georgia O’Keeffe. Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV, 1930. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, (Washington). National Gallery of Art, Washington, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Bequest of Georgia O’Keeffe.

Grey Blue & Black – Pink Circle, 1929.

“Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things.” —Georgia O’Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe. Grey Blue & Black – Pink Circle, 1929. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art. Dallas Museum of Art, Gift of The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.

Dancing Lines

Listen to the music featured in Dancing Lines.

Georgia O’Keeffe. Green Lines and Pink, 1919. Oil on canvas, 18 x 10 inches. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation and The Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation.

Credits

We would like to thank the following people for their work and support on this exhibition.

Electric Playhouse

Luke Balaoro
Max Beck 
Brandon Garrett
Maddy Minnis
Brittany Nacki
Bill Pritchard
Simone Seagle
Eric Yakley

Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
Liz Neely
Ariel Plotek
Liz O’Brien
Yaritza Pule
Renee Lucero
Krisi Breeze
Dale Kronkright
Liz Ehrnst

Music & Sound Design
Chris Alires
Stock Audio sourced from Soundly and Freesound.org.

Title & Graphic Designs
Rebx Berdel