Georgia O’Keeffe: “My New Yorks,” curated Sarah Kelly Oehler and Annelise K. Madsen, was on view at the Art Institute of Chicago from June 2 to September 22, 2024.
“I realize it’s unusual for an artist to want to work way up near the roof of a big hotel, in the heart of the roaring city, but I think that’s just what the artist of today needs for stimulus.” The words are those of Georgia O’Keeffe, stated in a 1928 interview, while the “big hotel” in the “roaring city” was the newly built Shelton, which straddled Lexington Avenue like a colossus on a tightrope. Modern skyscrapers—those that incorporated “wedding cake”–style setbacks to ensure that New York streets wouldn’t be starved of daylight—had only just begun to make their way uptown. The Empire State Building was still a couple years off, and you couldn’t live in it even after it opened. From her thirtieth-floor corner unit, O’Keeffe could look out onto the gridiron in three directions, though she seemed to have enjoyed the East River exposure the most.
The paintings that she produced i…