Today we visited the Vancouver Art Gallery for this summer's major exhibition, Carr O'Keefe Kahlo which looks for thematic similarities between three women considered to be among North America's premier artists; Frida Kahlo of Mexico, Emily Carr of Canada, and Georgia O'Keefe of the United States.
I like the idea of Frida Kahlo.
A committed Marxist, friend of Trotsky, lover of Diego Rivera one of the great socialist painters of the age, and she herself an equally famous painter with the sort of bright palette that usually inspires me. But I saw a lot of Kahlo today, and confess I don't care for her work in bulk. Her endless self-portraits in essentially similar settings seem more like pandering self-obsession than either socialist or indigenous consciousness. While I enjoy her palette, I don't enjoy her style of painting. In fact, much of it rather annoyed me; or, rather, perhaps it is the fame of these banal works that annoys me.
Frida Kahlo
The subtitle of the exhibition, the theme that is I suppose being suggested as the link between these women is "Places of Their Own." According to the exhibition catalogue, "their work gives form to a mythos of North America, linking region and nationality to larger forces at work in Western consciousness." I can see how this works with Carr and O'Keefe; but with Frida Kahlo I always have the impression that she is donning those dresses for effect, to show off herself rather than the culture expressed in the clothes. And her work seems so mannered compared to the liquid freedoms enjoyed by Emily Carr and Georgia O'Keefe.
I did not buy the book ($65, I think) that accompanies the exhibit, and it is probably unfair of me to criticize after a single viewing a thesis that the curator no doubt spends a couple of hundred pages defending. Still, in all, other than the gender and period, I did not feel a link between Kahlo and the others.
The Vancouver Art Gallery is home to the Permanent Collection of Emily Carr. There are regular special exhibits of her work (one is going on right now, for example, coincident with but unconnected to the joint exhibition) and she is always available to us. It was especially interesting, therefore, to see a selection of her works deliberately set within a wider framework.
Emily Carr
I have to confess that I have not been a huge fan of Emily Carr in the past. A lot of that has to do with the particular blue-green palette that features in most of her works. At this exhibition, however, I seemed able to get past that and see the extraordinary organic life that almost vibrates through many of these paintings. At least fifty percent of the canvasses still don't work for me, but I suspect that I will soon revisit the Permanent Collection, make myself better acquainted with them, and that I will be drawn closer to them after this experience.
And then there's Georgia O'Keefe.
It is a long time since I have seen more than an isolated O'Keefe. However, over the years, I've managed to see a lot of them, one at a time, and my view of her work has probably been influenced by the discontinuity of experience. I would tend to love one piece and then dislike the next piece or two, and love the next again. At this exhibition, there is a wide range of O'Keefe's paintings and I was at last able to put each work in perspective. And she is great!
O'Keefe
I still don't really care for skulls and such but, for instance, her explorations in that area in the Pelvis Series are magnificent. Like Emily Carr, she has the ability to create landscapes that are more like animated bodies than stolid rocks and trees. I fell completely in love with her Patio Series and her pictures of adobe churches: somehow she makes the flat planes sing with radiant joy. Magical stuff.
So, all in all, a very worthwhile exhibit. It enlightened my view of O'Keefe, brought me home to Emily Carr, and at least allowed me to make a personal judgement on Frida Kahlo's paintings. The curator's work was well done. – (David Chun)
