Famous Art for the Pandemic – & Life

Update 03 July 2025: This post was initially published during the 2020/2021 COVID pandemic. As an art history professor, world traveler and lover of great art and art museums, I set out to connect famous art with what was going on in the world around us. First posted on Face Book, it moved into the creation of this website. Click here for additional postings on a Year in the Life of the Pandemic.

”Blue Morning Glories”

Georgia O’Keeffe, 1935, American Abstract

“Nobody sees a flower, really–it is so small–we haven’t time, and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” Georgia O’Keeffe

One of O’Keeffe’s trademark subjects is flowers—large flowers that give the viewer what I like to call a “bee’s eye view” of the subject!

I first wrote this last year (18 July 2020) marking Twenty-two weeks into the 2020 COVID pandemic. I looked for things that give me joy! Flowers give me joy! My summer flower garden is lush and colorful again this year, as it was in 2020 –and full of opportunity to give me much joy! (Update: 28 July 2021)

O’Keeffe loves color, and the combination of the brilliance and sheer size of her work make it jump off of the wall of any museum—and easily identifiable as hers. I love looking at her paintings of flowers because I also love color–and flowers–and they give me joy!

In this oil painting, her morning glory is enlarged to about 3 feet in diameter! (30″ x 40″, Smithsonian American Art Museum)

The flowers in my photos from my garden are barely 3 inches in diameter! I love O’Keeffe’s way of blowing up even the tiniest flowers to force us to LOOK – really, really look – at them!

Enjoy this post? Enjoy O’Keeffe? Enjoy Morning Glories? If so, click the “LIKE” button below! Add an encouraging comment as well! Thanks! ~Cher

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