14 October 2012

'i recall an august afternoon in chicago in 1973 when i took my daughter, then seven, to see what georgia o'keeffe had done with where she had been. one of the vast o'keeffe 'sky above clouds' canvases floated over the back stairs in the chicago art institute that day, dominating what seemed to be several stories of empty light, and my daughter looked at it once, ran to the landing, and kept on looking. 'who drew it,' she whispered after a while. i told her. 'i need to talk to her,' she said finally.

my daughter was making, that day in chicago, an entirely unconscious but quite basic assumption about people and the work they do. she was assuming that the glory she saw in the work reflected a glory in its maker, that the painting was the painter as the poem is the poet, that every choice one made alone - every word chosen or rejected, every brush stroke laid or not laid down - betrayed one's character.'

/ excerpt from the essay 'georgia o'keeffe' from the white album by joan didion