O'Keeffe at the Whitney

Big opening(s) last week for the O'Keeffe and abstraction show at the Whitney. My favorite pieces include a series of paintings of a shingle and an oyster shell. Three versions, all from different museum collections, are hung together (the painting from the Boston MFA is here.). The arrangement is a particularly nice study of the artist's thinking about abstraction vs. representation. And maybe more importantly, it exemplifies the best purpose of a museum show: to bring together artworks that tell a story. In this case, the whole is greater than the sum.

While the museum's website has very few images from the show (unless you watch the brief promotional video, you'll see just three paintings, all flowers), the catalogue is more interesting. Reason alone to have a look are the letters from O'Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz, her dealer/lover/husband, included in an appendix. The Beinecke Library at Yale made this correspondence available only in 2006, and the selection here is great--intellectual, steamy, fascinating stuff for those of us who love American art.