by Paul Henrickson

While it is certainly not the first time that a “head of state” has sponsored an art opening, I can only say that I am pleased that Governor Jerry Apodaca has done so. Without attempting to disentangle the many motivations that may have prompted the move to use the lobby of the Governor’s office as a Gallery for the exposition of notable art, the general direction is laudable.

The premier show of selected works by the internationally know artist Georgia O’Keeffe was, in many respects, a “coup” for the governor’s “Commissioner for Cultural Affairs” Allan Pearson. The continuing significance of this program will depend largely on this man’s perspicacity in weighing aesthetic as well as political values.

Georgia O’Keeffe (Mrs. Alfred Stieglitz) was born 1887 and become for many almost a house-hold word. If I have heard her name mentioned or seen her works once I have done so for thirty years. In the course of her career she has been referred to in college texts as a “cubist”, a “symbolist”, an “abstractionist”, all of which might point to the difficulty categorizers have in selecting the word-clue which will make it easier for the maturing mind to pass a final examination.

The works on display in the State Capitol are few and range from 1927 to 1943. Although for those who have a memory backlog of her other works to refer to the absence of identifying labels may make no difference, it may however make a difference for those for whom the name of Georgia O’Keeffe may be new or unfamiliar.

A painter who has worked for a half century presumably required, for our communal benefit, an exhibition of vastly larger scope than what the governor’s lobby can offer. The reason for this is that when one is dealing with creative artist a single focus is insufficient. To paraphrase Haniel Long, such an exhibition must protect the artist’s dream (“My Dream most fabulous and meaningful, stand guard, stand guard.”) From any point of view the most fabulous and meaningful in an artist’s life long work is the evidence of the effort to pull out from that inner stirring a new conceptualized creature. Most often the anvil of civilization is placed, by the general run of historians, in the hands of politicians and militarists. So, the subtler manifestations of a way of seeing the world are often lost unless the politician is also a poet.

In attempting to analyze the work of Georgia O’Keeffe it becomes increasingly important to refer to the fact that she has come to grips with the irksome problem of selection, what needs to be included and what needs to be excluded. At this time I reject the idea that she is a “cubist” “abstractionist” or symbolist”, terms which may act as red herrings for our proper understanding. I see in her work evidence suggesting that she loves the curve of an antler, the modulations in a skull, the rhythms in the petals of a rose and the “sound” of strong and of subtle contrasts. All these, together with the amorphous depth of sky, are sufficient as aspects of life’s qualities, to draw our attention away from the cannibalism of human relation toward a life-enhancing and somewhat meditative response to a quieter existential drama “...Thought can be the life of God...”

These are the observations, recordings and statements which civilize. It is even less important with Georgia O’Keeffe whether or not “technique” is showmanship. This is also true, very often, with the work of Chuzo Tamotzu whose exhibition “Spring Birds and Flower Baskets” also opened this Sunday.

Aside from the fact that the work on the walls appeared to move out into the center of the gallery as a result of the inclusion of real baskets on real branches, there is something of greater import in the pen and ink drawings that a matter of a decorative setting.

When the technique, the application of the medium and the use of the tool are so fused with the subject matter that it become a major mental effort on the part of the observer to distinguish between the method and the product, at that point, singular and particular works reach an aesthetic apogee that cannot, forever, be sustained. But it is that brief moment when the qualities of the work blend with our mind’s powers to receive them that we are fulfilled. Two drawings in the present exhibition seem to possess this quality, “Peonies No.1” and one of a group of birds raiding a sunflower called “Sunflower Eaters”.

[review appearing in “The Santa Fe Reporter”, Santa Fe, New Mexico in the 1980’s]