The Shell 1934

Curator: Soaring and bottomless, but also austere. Is it a dream? A vortex? An uncoiling...anything? Editor: Here we have Georgia O’Keeffe’s “The Shell,” created in 1934. This striking piece is a drawing. Note the combination of the organic subject matter and the precisionist style that she adopted, reflecting both nature’s inherent forms and a sharp geometric clarity. Curator: I see in this piece so much of O’Keeffe’s own exploration of femininity. This enlargement and focus on the spiraling shell offers a kind of feminine landscape…a subtle, perhaps even subconscious, commentary on the female form. And the black void in the center gives me the shivers. Editor: Indeed. The reading of O'Keeffe's works, particularly her magnified flowers and shells, through a feminist lens has become quite significant, especially considering the era. There are echoes of psychoanalytic theories emerging at the time... the shell here being less about what one sees on its surface and more about the invitation to interpret its meaning through layers of lived experience. Curator: Okay, I buy that… it is charged with feeling. Tell me more about her technique? Editor: Her ability to translate texture through monochrome is striking, I find. Her employment of the medium of drawing – which gives that effect of tactility – elevates what might otherwise be mundane to this intense object that breathes in a certain uncanny way. The drawing technique allows for these incredibly subtle gradients, which contributes to the soft and somewhat dreamlike quality of the piece despite the sharp, almost scientific level of detail. It beckons the eye. Curator: Ultimately, this isn't just a picture of a shell, is it? Editor: Absolutely. O'Keeffe takes something familiar and transforms it. It serves as an entry point for us to contemplate the beauty, fragility, and the enigmatic nature of our inner selves and the world around us.