BARBARA BUHLER LYNES

O'Keeffe Museum GeorgiaAnsel Adams and Georgia O'Keeffe first metin Taos, New Mexico, in 1929. She was already an established artist, while he was at the beginning of his career, and their friendship lasted for the rest of their lives. GEORGIA O'KEEFE AND ANSEL ADAMS: NATURAL AFFINITIES suggests parallels in their distinctive visions of both natural and human-made environments and illustrates the artists' achievements in capturing the reality and essence of the world around them. More than 100 beautifully reproduced paintings and photographs are accompanied by critical essays on Adams and O'Keeffe and a biographical essay on the friendship between Adams, O'Keeffe, and Alfred Stieglitz.

"This book will significantly contribute to our understanding of this phase of O''Keeffe''s life and accomplishments. Lynes'' essay, in particular, opens up a new aspect of the artist''s work. She revisits the landscapes that inspired much of O''Keeffe''s artistry, comparing each carefully with its corresponding painted rendition. She discovers how the artist walks the fine line between specific observation and playful abstraction. Her careful consideration of each pictorial structure makes us see the lengths to which O''Keeffe went in order to make these landscape forms speak to her."--Kathleen Pyne, University of Notre Dame When Georgia O''Keeffe first visited New Mexico in 1917, she was instantly drawn to the stark beauty of its unusual architectural and landscape forms. In 1929, she began spending part of almost every year painting there, first in Taos, and subsequently in and around Alcalde, Abiquiu, and Ghost Ranch, with occasional excursions to remote sites she found particularly compelling. "Georgia O''Keeffe and New Mexico" is the first book to analyze the artist''s famous depictions of these Southwestern landscapes. Beautifully illustrated and gracefully written, the book accompanies an exhibition of the same name at the Georgia O''Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It reproduces the exhibition''s 50 paintings and includes striking photographs of the sites that inspired them as well as diagrams of the region''s distinctive geology. The book examines the magnificence of O''Keeffe''s work through essays by three noted authors. Barbara Buhler Lynes, Curator of the Georgia O''Keeffe Museum and organizer of the exhibition, discusses the relationship of the artist''s paintings to the places that inspired her.