“I Took Back A Barrel Of Bones To New York. They Were My Symbols Of The Desert.”

Open Culture posted this cool video of a 92-year-old Georgia O’Keeffe.

An excerpt from “Horizons of a Pioneer,” a 1968 Life cover story about O’Keeffe, who found other artists in New York but truly found her own art in New Mexico:

“When I came to New Mexico in the summer of 1929, I was so crazy about the country that I thought, how can I take part of it with me to work on? There was nothing to see in the land in the way of a flower. There were just dry white bones. So I picked them up. People were pretty annoyed having their cars filled with those bones. But I took back a barrel of bones to New York. They were my symbols of the desert, but nothing more. I haven’t sense enough to think of any other symbolism. The skulls were there and I could say something with them. To me they are as beautiful as anything I know. To me they are strangely more living than the animals walking around–hair, eyes and all, with their tails switching. The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keely alive on the desert even though it is vast and empty and untouchable–and knows no kindness with all its beauty.”


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