NARRATOR:

This is “Black Place I” by Georgia O’Keeffe from 1944. This canvas, 26 inches high and 30 inches wide, is constructed in many shades of gray, from near white to near black. O’Keefe’s organic, rippling style presents what seems to be a layered mountain landscape bisected by a deep central ravine. From the top of the canvas, a delta of thin lines squiggle downward, like tributaries between gray rocks, dotted here and there with pale green, suggesting distant leafy trees. These thin squiggly lines converge at the center of the canvas into a V-shaped valley. This canyon is bordered on either side by dome-like curves, stacked one in front of another, each dome a little darker than the one above it. The lower third of the painting, beneath these domes, is marked by another, wider V-shape, a line of gray spanning from the left edge of the painting to the right edge. Beneath this, at the very bottom of the canvas the paint is suddenly pale pink, with brushes of white, resembling tender, marbled flesh.