Abstraction

Abstraction

The MIA at night

(Minneapolis Institute of Arts)

Fri, Oct 5th

My friend Maggie and I went to the MIA to see the O'Keeffe exhibit "Circling Around Abstraction." A small exhibit of her work. This was significant for us - the last time we went to an O'Keeffe opening together was back in 1994 also at the MIA for the "O'Keeffe/Stieglitz" exhibit. We had lost touch as friends for about six or seven years and just this year got back in touch. Some things are like that. Circling.

You can see more on the O'Keeffe exhibit at http://www.artsmia.org/circling-around-abstraction

You can see my version of red flowers in the photo at left.

I noted some of Georgia O'Keeffe's observations throughout the exhibit:

"nothing is less real than realism"


The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint

The blue that will always be there as it is afar

after man's desctruction is finished.

I decided that I wasn't going to spend my life doing what had already been done. (1976)


Notan - the Japanese word for dark/light
There is no word in English to express the idea contained in the phrase dark-light.
Arthur W Dow, "Composition," (Doubleday, 1914)