Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern

Opening today, the Brooklyn Museum’s Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern exhibition has received a wonderful review from the New York Times’ co-chief art critic Roberta Smith.

The museum received a grant from the Thoma Foundation to support the publication of an accompanying catalogue that has expanded scholarship and brought new perspectives to the study of O’Keeffe and her persona.

This book explores how Georgia O’Keeffe lived her life steeped in modernism, bringing the same style she developed in her art to her dress, her homes, and her lifestyle. Richly illustrated with images of her art and views of the two homes she designed and furnished in New Mexico, the book also includes never before published photographs of O’Keeffe’s clothes. The author has attributed some of the most exquisite of these garments to O’Keeffe, a skilled seamstress who understood fabric and design, and who has become an icon in today’s fashion world as much for her personal style as for her art. As one of her friends stated, O’Keeffe “never allowed her life to be one thing and her painting another.” This fresh and carefully researched study brings O’Keeffe’s style to life, illuminating how this beloved American artist purposefully proclaimed her modernity in the way she dressed and posed for photographers, from Alfred Stieglitz to Bruce Weber.

On view through July 23 at the Brooklyn Museum, Living Modern will travel to the Reyolda House Museum of American Art and the Peabody Essex Museum. The catalogue is available here.