Some Memories of Drawings.
One of 100 Copies
Signed by O’Keeffe and Baskin
O’Keeffe, Georgia. Some Memories of Drawings. New York: Atlantis Editions, 1974.
8vo.; 21 color reproductions, each loosely inserted into a printed folder; with a preliminary string-tied signature; a colophon signature. In a specially made cardboard slipcase.
Second edition, expanded to include more drawings and prepared as a “trade edition” six years after the first; one of 100 numbered copies signed by O’Keefe and by Baskin, who designed the book (this is copy #59); 120 copies, the entire edition. Each drawing is laid into a folder on which is printed O’Keefe’s recollections of the work.
In her Introduction, Doris Bry – of Atlantis Editions – explains the genesis of this edition:
The first portfolio, which reproduced ten drawings, was published in 1968, in a signed, limited edition of 230 copies. Since such a project had of necessity a narrow audience we thought it would be of interest to publish all of these drawings in a small book for wide circulation at a moderate price. It’s prior publication in a limited edition seemed necessary to set a standard of high quality which could be maintained in a trade edition.
These 21 drawings represent nearly fifty years of O’Keeffe’s artistic output. The drawings were originally done in charcoal or watercolor; they are reproduced here in roughly chronological order; from 1915 through 1963. O’Keeffe writes:
The first seven drawings are from a group that I made in 1915-16 when I first had the idea that what I had been taught was of little value to me except for the use of my materials as a language – charcoal, pencil, pen and ink, watercolor, pastel and oil. The use of my materials wasn’t a problem for me. But what to say with them? I had been taught to work like others and after careful thinking I decided that I wasn’t going to spend my life doing what had already been done.
I realized that I had things in my head not like what I had been taught – not like what I had seen – shapes and idea so familiar to me that it hadn’t occurred to me to put them down. I decided to stop painting, to put away everything I had done, and start to say things that were my own.
This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing – no one interested – no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown – no one to satisfy but myself.
O’Keeffe’s “memories” of her drawings are printed on the upper covers of the folded leaves; on the verso of the folded leaf is the title of the drawing, with the loosely inserted drawing immediately to the right of the title. Her comments about the drawings reveal that she constantly reproduces what she sees in her imagination or her dreams, many images stem from her subconscious. For one drawing, she writes: “This is a drawing of something I never saw except in the drawing. When one begins to wander around in one’s own thoughts and half-thoughts what one sees is often surprising.” The drawing, in charcoal, resembles folds of billowy fabric, and one section cuts diagonally across the page from the upper left-hand corner and spills to the bottom right side, in alternating grey and white stripes of varying thickness. She frequently translates her moods and feelings to the page (“Drawing No. 9 is the drawing of a headache.”), and also transcribes sounds and music onto the page. For drawing No. 14 she explains she was walking down a hall at Columbia University, and, upon hearing music coming from one of the classrooms, entered and joined other art students in translating the sounds into art. In some of the drawings, O’Keeffe creates abstractions of experiences she’s had, or Southwestern scenes she viewed around her home in Taos, New Mexico. In two drawings in particular, O’Keeffe renders a road and a riverbed into abstract lines that curve or zig-zag across the page; at first glance
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