Committed to Memory: Josephine Halvorson and Georgia O’Keeffe
By Charlotte Strick
There’s a certain weather-beaten tree stump at Ghost Ranch—the U-shaped, adobelike home once occupied by the famed American Modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe—where Josephine Halvorson, the first artist-in-residence at Santa Fe’s Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, often took breaks from her own work. It offered her a clear view of Cerro Pedernal, the narrow New Mexican mesa that appears in many of O’Keeffe’s desert paintings, and where the artist’s ashes are scattered. From here Halvorson could observe weather patterns forming around the mesa’s caprock, circling the top and then sweeping theatrically down its cliff face, racing across the plain toward her.
Halvorson makes paintings
on-site, in proximity to the objects she hopes to commemorate, and the museum
offered her access to a rich archive of letters, clothing, books, as well as
O’Keeffe’s two homes, Ghost Ranch and nearby Abiquiú. Halvorson spent two
months there: one in the summer of 2019 and another a year later, during the
pandemic.
“It was through the sense
of quiet and closeness that I connected with her things,” Halvorson recalls.
“The museum registrar would open a cabinet or put the group of keys out on the
table for me. No one who visited me was permitted to come into the house, so it
was really just me there alone, working every day from dawn till dusk.” In
Abiquiú, Halvorson made intimate acrylic gouache paintings of the tree stump, a
curious grouping of tagged keys, and the interior of a kitchen cupboard stacked
with O’Keeffe’s dishes. Wishing to manifest a sense of place, she used the same
close crops to capture a National Forest sign complete with target practice
holes, as well as an abandoned pile of kindling that she conceived as a
memorial to her father, whose loss she was grieving—he had passed from
coronavirus that year. Her still lifes are all framed by wide, chalky-colored
“surrounds” that draw on the dusty hues of the area. Halvorson regards these as
visual “buffer zones” between the object in situ and the white gallery wall.
Each has a surface made rough by small rocks, which Halvorson collected on the
property and then ground up to be preserved in paint as a geological account of
the place and time. “The rocks represent a much deeper past than what I’m able
to paint in real time,” she explains. The result is a series of paintings,
eleven in all, that read like tightly framed long-exposure snapshots. The
greatest challenge, Halvorson said, was “to make art that isn’t about O’Keeffe,
but is instead in relation to her.”
A museum says they gave an artist $84,000 in cash to use in artwork. He delivered blank canvases and titled them "Take the Money and Run."
A museum says they gave an artist $84,000 in cash to use in artwork. He delivered blank canvases and titled them "Take the Money and Run."
BY CAITLIN O'KANE
A Danish artist was given $84,000
by a museum to use in a work of art. When he delivered the piece he was supposed
to make, it was not as promised. Instead, the artist, Jens Haaning, gave the
Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark two blank canvases and said
they were titled "Take the Money and Run."
Haaning was asked to recreate two
of his previous works: 2010's "An Average Danish Annual Income" and
"An Average Austrian Annual Income," first exhibited in 2007. Both
used actual cash to show the average incomes of the two countries, according to
a news release from the artist.
In addition to compensation for
the work, Haaning was also give bank notes to use in the work, museum director
Lasse Andersson told CBS News via email. Their contract even stated the museum
would give Haaning an additional 6,000 euros to update the work, if needed,
Andersson said. At the time the works were initially exhibited, the Danish
piece highlighted the average income of 328,000 kroner, approximately $37,800,
while the average Austrian salary illustrated was around €25,000, or $29,000.
For the "Work it Out"
exhibit at the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art, Haaning was meant to fill frames
with money. But they were empty.
"We also have a contract
that the money $84,000 US dollars to be displayed in the work is not Jens' and
that it must be paid back when the exhibition closes on 16 January 2022,"
Andersson said.
"The exhibition is called
'Work it Out' and features works of art by many different contemporary
artists," he said, adding that the exhibition It runs from September 24 to
January 16, 2022.
Andersson said when they spoke to
the artist about making the piece earlier this year, he agreed to the contract
and "he indicated a fairly easy job."
But when it came time for Haaning
to actually deliver, he did the unexpected.
"The curator received an
email in which Jens Haaning wrote that he had made a new piece of art work and
changed the work title into 'Take the Money and Run,'" Andersson said.
"Subsequently, we could ascertain that the money had not been put into the
work."
Indeed, the frames meant to be
filled with cash were empty.
"The staff was very
surprised when they opened the crates. I was abroad when the crates were
opened, but suddenly received a lot of mails," Andersson said.
When he finally saw "Take
the Money and Run," Andersson said he actually laughed. "Jens is
known for his conceptual and activistic art with a humoristic touch. And he
gave us that – but also a bit of a wake up call as everyone know wonders were
did the money go," he said.
According to Haaning's press
release, "the idea behind was to show how salaries can be used to measure
the value of work and to show national differences within the European Union.
But by changing the title of the work to "Take the Money and Run"
Haaning "questions artists' rights and their working conditions in order
to establish more equitable norms within the art industry."
"Everyone would like to have
more money and, in our society, work industries are valued differently,"
Haaning said in a statement. "The artwork is essentially about the working
conditions of artists. It is a statement saying that we also have the
responsibility of questioning the structures that we are part of. And if these
structures are completely unreasonable, we must break with them. It can be your
marriage, your work - it can be any type of societal structure".
Andersson said while it wasn't
what they had agreed on in the contract, the museum got new and interesting
art. "When it comes to the amount of $84,000, he hasn't broke any contract
yet as the initial contract says we will have the money back on January 16th
2022."
He said they are in contact with
Haaning, who he called a "well-respected and well-known artist in
Denmark." But they have yet to reach an agreement.
The arts
1929 Platinum, diamond and carved emerald brooch by Oscar Heyman. From Art Deco
BLANCHARD-MARIE-Composicion-cubista_low
1930 “Early Morning” coffee set by Clarice Clifford.
A street scene, David Burliuk
Goblet Imitating Porcelain, Translucent to opaque creamy white glass; mold-blown, 17th century, France
An Italian Rococo Polychrome-Painted Commode, Genoa, ca 1760j
Capital ca. 1130–40, Metropolitan Museum of Art Cloisters, marble.
Cinema foyer, New Victoria, Westminster, London 1930. By E. Wamsley Lewis.
Egg Cup by Adams and Company, American Decorative Arts
USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection
The USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection is one of the most unique collections in the National Agricultural Library (NAL). As a historic botanical resource, it documents new fruit and nut varieties and specimens introduced by USDA plant explorers from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The collection spans the years 1886 to 1942, with the majority of the paintings created between 1894 and 1916. The plant specimens represented by these artworks originated in 29 countries and 51 states and territories in the US; there are 7,497 watercolour paintings, 87 line drawings and 79 wax models created by approximately 21 artists.
source: https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/usda_pomological_watercolor
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