Cityscapes
When we think about Georgia O’Keeffe, images of flowers, animal skulls, and the American Southwest immediately come to mind. A visit to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe a few years ago broadened our appreciation for her extraordinary talent as an artist, one whose career spanned seven decades.
Several of O’Keeffe’s paintings on display featured urban landscapes, particularly of New York. We learned that O’Keeffe was one of the first American artists to live in a skyscraper. In the 1920s, she and her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, had an apartment on the 30th floor of the Shelton Hotel in Manhattan. The time O’Keeffe spent there undoubtedly inspired paintings like the one featured above, entitled simply Manhattan. Just last year, an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago called “Georgia O’Keeffe: My New Yorks” focused exclusively on her cityscapes.
The quotation on which we based this week’s puzzle comes from Marta Ruiz del Árbol, curator of Modern Painting in the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, Spain, which held a Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition in 2021. We included some clue-answer sets specifically about O’Keeffe and her work, others about the visual arts more generally. As always, we’re curious to know how many you saw.
One of those chestnuts, found in Answer R (EPHRUSSI), might be a bit obscure. In 2010, a ceramicist named Edmund de Waal published a remarkable memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, which traces his family’s history from Odessa to Paris, Vienna, and Tokyo. The “hare” in the title is one of several dozen miniature Japanese carvings known as netsuke in a collection purchased by Charles Ephrussi, one of De Waal’s relatives. Ephrussi was a wealthy patron of the arts in late 19th-century Paris and can be seen wearing a top hat in Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party:
Would you welcome more acrostics with artistic themes?
Wow, such a great acrostic, and yes, I’d definitely love more with artistic themes! Thank you for this! Although I had read “The Hare With Amber Eyes” and loved it, I had forgotten the name “Ephrussi.” Now I want to reread that wonderful book!
I had a wonderful solving experience with this one – thank you! EPHRUSSI was my last fill – I was able to fill it in by finishing the quote. So cool to know he is the one in the top hat in the Renoir! I did not know much about O’Keeffe and New York so (as always) this was quite enlightening (or should I say EYE-OPENing?). I do associate Ghost Ranch with O’Keeffe because of her highly memorable skull paintings. Thanks again for a fun puzzle!
I’ve seen a couple of retrospectives on Georgia O’Keefe’s works here locally. One show was a very interesting showing of many of her works side by side with the, also excellent, photos of Ansel Adams on the same subjects. They apparently met in the Southwest. I haven’t seen but a few of her New York paintings; this was an interesting quote. I would enjoy more puzzles of artistic themes. I noticed related clue words C, D, M, N and V and J, K and T.
Another splendid offering.
Only 3 after first pass this time. Somehow i saw OKEEFFE really early, but there was still stumbling after that. I had OROTUND for FLOWERY for the longest time – now I see how the latter is more appropriate!
Speaking of “flowery,” if anybody has thoughts about the meaning of the three flowers in the Manhattan painting above, please chime in!
I like to think the flowers in “Manhattan” are somehow related to or representative of the multiculturalism of the city, symbols of its vibrancy, in contrast to the more static architectural aspects of the city.
A lovely acrostic that really did me in. Although I love her work, I couldn’t remember that O’Keeffe had two Fs which made it hard to spot the theme. I had feisty instead of FRISKY and elevated instead of ESTEEMED, both of which had enough letters in the right places to make spotting my mistakes tough. I didn’t know EPHRUSSI, and didn’t know the source of the LUTHER quote. For once the answers I did have didn’t place letters in the quote in spots that allowed me to see enough words to work backwards. So with great reluctance, I resorted to a couple of look ups and, voila, the puzzle unfolded like an OKEEFFE flower, and as my five year old grandson recently said to me, I wondered, “how did you not see that?” 🤦♂️
How nice to make a New York connection in the puzzle on top of everything else. More like this please.
I think the three flowers are meant to represent the longing for the softer, less angular natural world amid the jagged roughness of the cityscape, but what do I
know.
It was tougher than usual for me to get a grip on the theme, so all the more fun. I really appreciate the care you take in relating the clues to the quote, and enjoy all of your themes, Thank you for the interesting quotes and your blog commentaries.
This acrostic was perfectly calibrated for my solving buddy and me. It was one of the toughest so far by David B. and Jane S., but not so tough that we needed to google anything to finish it. Instead we got a few clues, then tried to fill in a few words of the quote, then got some more clues, went back to the quote, got some more clues, back and forth a few times: the perfect acrostic solving experience. Fun!