Green, Yellow and Orange
Brooklyn Museum photograph
Object Label
Serpentine curves inspired by natural forms were a mainstay of O’Keeffe’s art from the earliest years of her career. Later on, she found new pictorial opportunities in the aerial view, which she discovered when she flew across the country and around the world in the lower-altitude propeller planes of the 1950s and 1960s. In this work, which suggests the ribbon-like meander of a Western river through arid terrain, her reference to place is almost entirely subsumed by the force of the calligraphic, abstract design.
Caption
Georgia O'Keeffe American, 1887–1986. Green, Yellow and Orange, 1960. Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Frame: 40 1/4 x 30 1/4 x 1 3/4 in. (102.2 x 76.8 x 4.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Georgia O'Keeffe, 87.136.3. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 87.136.3_SL1.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Green, Yellow and Orange
Date
1960
Medium
Oil on canvas
Classification
Dimensions
40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm) Frame: 40 1/4 x 30 1/4 x 1 3/4 in. (102.2 x 76.8 x 4.4 cm)
Signatures
Unsigned
Credit Line
Bequest of Georgia O'Keeffe
Accession Number
87.136.3
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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Frequent Art Questions
Can you tell me about this?
"Green, Yellow, and Orange" was inspired by a flight in an airplane. O'Keeffe was truly mesmerized by the abstraction of the earth as seen from the sky.She said herself: "There's nothing abstract about those pictures; they are what I saw—and very realistic to me. I must say I changed the color to suit myself, but after all you can see any color you want when you look out the window."I love this painting!
I love this painting, too! So many of O'Keeffe's works are so abstract because she felt that nature itself was so abstract. This was inspired by the view from an airplane.She said herself: "There's nothing abstract about those pictures; they are what I saw—and very realistic to me. I must say I changed the color to suit myself, but after all you can see any color you want when you look out the window."Any relationship to paintings by Brice Marden?
I definitely see why you would ask that! It does have a similar aesthetic. To my knowledge, his works in this style were produced after O'Keeffe had already died.The thing I find interesting about this work is the high altitude perspective. This is really the opposite of her usual approach of blowing up one small detail of an object.However the result is the same: abstraction!Yes and Marden might have been influenced by this perhaps. Thank you this is wonderful!Tell me more.
This is one the most interesting works, in my opinion, in the exhibition. I'm interested to know why it caught your eye.This work was actually inspired by a flight in an airplane. O'Keeffe was interested in the way that both the distance and aerial perspective created a sort of "natural" abstraction.She said herself: "There's nothing abstract about those pictures; they are what I saw—and very realistic to me. I must say I changed the color to suit myself, but after all you can see any color you want when you look out the window."When I learned that, I could imagine a meandering river, surrounded by fields and forests.The colors first caught my eye. I love the American West from a plane.Ah yes! It could even be the reds and oranges of the desert earth and gorges or valleys cut through the rock.It seems that she didn't only study nature but also perhaps weather and astronomy.
She was so observant and seemed to draw inspiration from all aspects of the natural world. "Green, Yellow, and Orange," for example, was inspired by what she saw out the window of an airplane.Why did O'Keeffe paint this scene?
There's a reason that this painting looks so much like an aerial view of a river, despite how abstract it is. When Georgia O'Keeffe started traveling extensively later in her life, she would sketch out plane windows.Though the colors are altered, you can see a desert river, with fiery orange land around it, clearly in this painting. She said of these aerial views, "There's nothing abstract about those pictures; they are what I saw—and very realistic to me. I must say I changed the color to suit myself, but after all you can see any color you want when you look out the window."
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