The Eye: Abstraction — White Hill

Name: Eleanor Jones Harvey, Ph.D.

Occupation: Chief curator, Smithsonian American Art Musem

Residence: Arlington

Why I chose this picture: It’s just so elementally strong — that brown-black sky; I’m just captivated by it.  O’Keeffe uses two kinds of white; Lead White, which is an opaque, yellowish white, and Zinc White, which is a translucent, bluish white.  Often she applies them side-by-side, which makes her white areas seem to vibrate. This is a technique stemming back to the Renaissance.  In this painting, the differing optical properties of these two whites when placed side by side help her reinforce the folds defining the hills.  I know of no other American painter of her era who does this.

 

I remember my fist visit to The White Place, which was one of O’Keeffe’s favorite landscapes. The cliffs are made of white gypsum, and have an unearthly glow to them because of that.  I took a lot of color photographs there, trying to capture that haunting landscape.  It was a very spiritual experience, and I knew that not many people were permitted to visit, or even knew how to get there.  When I got home, I had the film developed.  But when I picked up the prints, there were only a few blurry images—my camera had jammed, and I had no photographic record of my visit.  I felt a weird thrill, as though the landscape itself, or O’Keeffe’s lingering presence in it, had sent a message that this was a landscape to remember internally.  I still have very strong memories of my day there, and when I see this painting, they come flooding back.