Blue and Green Music

Blue and Green Music
blue-and-green-music
Artist Georgia O’Keeffe
Year 1919-1921
Medium Oil on canvas
Location The Art Institute of Chicago
Dimensions 23 x 19 in.
58.4 x 48.3 cm
Georgia O’Keeffe Famous Paintings
Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue, 1931
Blue and Green Music, 1919-1921
Pineapple Bud, 1939
Black Iris, 1926
Red Canna, 1924
Blue Morning Glories, 1938
Complete Works

Blue and Green Music by Georgia O’Keeffe seeks to create a visual image to the sounds of music. The visual imagery of this painting mixes varied colors that have a vapor-like look to them.

The Sound and the Colors

What makes Blue and Green Music interesting is that it seeks to create a visual appearance that tries to create an image that defines, or at least represents, sound. The light colors are thought to represent light musical sounds and the darker colors represent deeper and, to a degree, more ominous sounds. The notion that images can be affixed to sounds fits in with the theories put forth in American Modernism as that movement revolved around the notion that human beings have the potential to shape their environment. The ability to affix images to sound would fit well into this movement’s theories.

Feminine and Natural World Imagery

The images evoke the natural world as they appear to be flower petals. These images also look like female genitalia, which was also a common motif of O’Keeffe’s work.