NARRATOR: In 1918, O’Keeffe went back to using oil paint—a vivid, luminous medium that allowed her to develop a vibrant palette that was unlike anyone else’s. She began using titles that called attention to that color—like this one, Music, Pink and Blue.
Pink and blue are far from the only colors that O’Keeffe uses here, but overall the painting is a play between warm and cool tones. Two soft lobes emerge from the painting’s upper corners—shallow but tactile volumes of blue, green, and lavender. They move towards each other, but don’t meet. Instead they touch up against tender sprouts of pinks and orange that seem to grow from the volume in the lower right. Overall the canvas is rhythmic, varied, and harmonious—qualities O’Keeffe associated with the music she refers to in the title. Modernist artists admired music because it was expressive even when it didn’t have words or evoke specific images. O’Keeffe found this quality especially compelling.
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE: I can see shapes. It’s as if my mind creates shapes that I don’t know about. I can’t say it any other way. But I get this shape in my head. And sometimes I know what it comes from and sometimes I don’t. And I think with myself that there are a few shapes that I have repeated a number of times during my life and I hadn’t known I was repeating them until after I’d done it.