Out From Under

Everyone is familiar with the works of Georgia O’Keeffe. We have one print in our home. My kids always liked it, and would speculate, as they do with all the abstract art in our home, just what it could be.

And the guesses were sweet, entertaining — and wrong. Then came the day when each of them suddenly realized just what it was they were looking at. The widened eyes, the start of recognition, the quick glance at me - “Does mom know what this thing is?? Does she know I know?” This is one of the perks of parenting, folks. Heh.

You have to have achieved a little sexual awareness to see the sensual, but once you’re aware, it’s everywhere.

In a Jack-in-the-Pulpit:

Or an iris:

Or a white rose:

They’re all pictures of the same thing, of course. The same thing in different moods, or as perceived by different people. Then I stumbled across another artist, Alison Watt, who has done something that gives the same sensual, evocative feel, this time in photography:

Sheets. Plain white sheets. Like you’d find in a hospital. Sterile? Not in the hands of an artist with the ability to see what’s in front of her and capture it. Once you’re sexually aware, you see things you hadn’t seen before. This is too often reduced to peurile sniggering, but in the hands of artists like O’Keeffe and Watt, the sensual is made beautiful — as it is, and should be.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 7:59 am and is filed under Ilona's Take. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.