“[Georgia] O’Keeffe hated South Carolina. She called it ‘deliciously stupid,’ but she loved nature. It was here in Columbia, far away from what art historians call the ‘anxiety of influence,’ that she took a moment to analyze everything she had painted up until that point, and to reject it. She spread everything on the floor in her room and noticed that each of her paintings reflected the techniques and styles and subject matter of her instructors. It occurred to her that she had ideas of her own.”
— Columbia Museum of Art Chief Curator Will South, whose facility is hosting a groundbreaking exhibit on the modernist art of Georgia O’Keefe, Charleston City Paper.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina!