Our theme for this week has been the night sky: we began with the celestial bodies of Clanjamfrie, hummed along with songs celebrating light and dark; were cheered by Polka Dots and Moonbeams, and reflected on the resonant activity of stargazing. I thought I’d conclude our theme with another Making Light aesthetic icon. . . . or icons, plural: Georgia O’ Keeffe’s Evening Star series of 1917. That year, O’Keeffe was working as an art teacher at a college in Canyon, Texas, and was also beginning to discover her deep aesthetic affinity with the landscapes of the American Southwest. After work, she’d walk, enjoying the wide skies, and spaciousness of her new surroundings. Of this time she later wrote:
We often walked away from the town in the late afternoon sun. There were no paved roads, no fences, no trees. It was like the ocean, but it was wide, wide land. The evening star would be high in the sunset sky when it was still broad daylight. That evening star fascinated me. I had nothing, but to walk into nowhere, and the wide sunset space, and the star.Â
O’ Keeffe’s Evening Star is likely to be Venus: often the first of the planets to appear in the night sky, and which sometimes shines with a strange, ineffable brightness. You can see Venus’ strangeness, and striking luminosity, I think, in this photograph of Tom’s, shot a couple of weeks ago.
O’Keeffe’s Evening Star paintings definitely have that profound strangeness, and luminosity.
I love the way that, as a series, O’Keeffe’s Evening Stars so powerfully suggest the creative impulse of an artist to return to the same compelling subject: a subject whose ideas she is addressing, working through, and bringing out into the open, through broad brushstrokes, bold undulating abstract forms, and striking washes of colour.
What do you think of the way O’Keeffe has chosen to represent the transition between day and night? Do her unusual, abstract depictions of a celestial body, shining in the evening sky at sunset speak to you? If so, what do they say?
To me, O’Keeffe’s Evening Stars convey a feeling of extraordinary abundance.
To me, they say that while the Texan sky’s vast expanse, its “wide, wide land”, might seem to suggest an idea of empty space that that emptiness is, is in fact, always-already full. . .
. . . that where nothing seems to be, a shining star might prompt you to look and see that, really, everything is there.
This is very much the way I try to look at winter: a season with associations of nothingness and emptiness, but which, if you look carefully enough, can really sing with its own this-ness, it’s own fullness, its own abundance.
You can see the progression of 8 of the 10 watercolours in the Evening Star series in the wonderful book that accompanied a recent exhibition at MoMa, Georgia O’ Keeffe: To See Takes Time (2023).
What are your favourite artworks depicting stars and the night sky?
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I love O’Keefe’s sinuous luminosity of the evening star, and how the colors wrap around and over each other. I had not seen this series of hers before. Thank you! I am in the city, but I often take a walk at night, and let the night sky wrap me in its soft fabric.
Normally we think of the red of sky at sunset. Over 40 years ago I received a Christmas card done by a Romanian folk artist showing a winter evening sky in an unexpected shade of green. To this day I search winter sunsets for that shade of green. It’s there, not often but it’s there!
The composition of these paintings, the softness of using watercolour but the harmony of the colours are the true delights for me. Absolutely a knitting colour palette here.
I love the painting ‘Hesperus, The Evening Star’ by Noel Paton, a Scottish Pre-Raphaelite, in the Kelvingrove Gallery in Glasgow. The star appears in a luminous sky above the heads of two lovers, with the crescent moon above it, just as it was a few nights ago. The stillness and quiet are so beautifully depicted.
I had not seen this, thank you!
Stary Night Vincent Van Gogh.
There is a very particular blue in the winter twilight that has captivated me since childhood. Often, Venus hangs in the midst of that vivid blue; not as large as Tom’s Venus, but still clear and vibrant. Maxfield Parrish uses a blue that is as close to my winter twilight as I’ve seen.
I love the paintings of the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint–my favorites are her sun and moon: The Dove: Nos. 12 and 13.. Learning the constellations in the night sky is one of the most rewarding activities I’ve ever done. For anyone interested, I highly recommend the book “Stars A New Way to See Them” by H.A. Rey. Rey connected the dots in constellation diagrams so that the figures are easier to visualize and memorize. And the website https://in-the-sky.org allows you to view a real time planetarium with the option of using his drawings. It’s fun to learn just one constellation at a time, using a laminated copy of one of H.A. Rey’s charts and a red flashlight rather than a phone app outdoors, which is easier on the eyes. The Astronomy League runs a program in which you draw all the constellations in the northern or southern sky and label the named stars and take some other data about the viewing conditions–and they will send you a certificate and an enamel pin badge! If you live in a large city with too much light, the planets Mars, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn are often still easy enough to see if they are out and it’s clear!
Thank you for this recommendation!
I loved this article. The place where I live is often discounted for it’s emptiness. In World War II, the B Reactor was built here. People from greener places,populated more densely by people or trees, often disparage it, or think it’s a good place to send their waste. But it has its own ecosystem, with animals and plants. And yes, with space. A beauty that is an acquired taste.
My favorite night skies are in the batik art of Lisa Telling Kattenbraker. Her blues, in particular, make me happy.
I agree, Georgia O’Keefe’s work is striking and memorable. This series is strong in colour and movement but I like Starlight Night as well. There is something about the pattern which appeals to me – perhaps I see the next design in it 😃
Starry Night by Van Gogh is so beautiful … and on that subject another song for the playlist -“Vincent” by Don McClean .
How wonderful that you selected O’Keeffe to illustrate your series of posts this week. She is the artist that most inspired me to try to make art myself. When talking of paintings about the night sky, it’s impossible to ignore Van Gogh’s Starry Night. That one inspired an art quilt with the subject of sunflowers, placed against a dark background and vibrating like Van Gogh’s stars.