Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities

Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities is an exhibit at the San Francisco Musuem of Modern Art from May 30 through September 7, 2009.

This traveling exhibition, organized by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, is the first to compare the works of two major twentieth century artists: Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) and Ansel Adams (1902-1984). At a time when the art world was dominated by men, O’Keeffe revolutionized the role of women artists with her lyrical, abstract paintings of desert mountains, flowers, plants and bones. Ansel Adams, a photographer and conservationist, helped legitimize photography as an art form with his haunting landscapes of the American West. They met for the first time in 1929 at a gathering of artists and writers in the Taos home of a mutual friend.

Despite the differences in their personalities, age and working methods, O’Keeffe and Adams developed a lifelong friendship through their mutual love of the natural world. The exhibition brings together approximately 100 works from both artists which reveal and contrast the similarities and differences of their views of the environment.

San Francisco Public Library has recently acquired the catalog that accompanies this SFMOMA exhibition for its reference collection. Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities (New York: Little, Brown, and Co., 2008) has superb reproductions of paintings and photographs, as well as insightful essays on both artists. The book is located in the Art and Music Department of the Main Library and may be used inside the library.

In addition to this book, the library also owns a variety of titles on both artists that may be checked out.

Books on Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams, An Autobiography with Mary Street Alinder. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1985).

Ansel Adams: Letters and Images, 1916-1984, edited by Mary Street Alinder. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1988).

Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs by Ansel Adams. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983).

Our National Parks by Ansel Adams. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1992).

The Portfolios of Ansel Adams edited by Tim Hill. (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1977).

This Is The American Earth by Ansel Adams and Nancy Newhall. (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1960).

Yosemite And The Range of Light by Ansel Adams. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979).

Books on Georgia O’Keeffe

The Art & Life of Georgia O’Keeffe by Jan Garden Castro. (New York: Crown, 1995).

Georgia O’Keeffe. (New York: Penguin Books, 1987).

Georgia O’Keeffe by Lisa Mintz Messinger. (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2001).

Georgia O’Keeffe: An Eternal Spirit by Susan Wright. (New York: New Line Books, 2006).

Georgia O’Keeffe and the Calla Lily in American Art, 1860-1940 by Barbara Buhler Lynes. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).

Georgia O’Keeffe, Art and Letters by Jack Cowart and Juan Hamilton. (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1987).

Georgia O’Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction by Richard D. Marshall. (Italy: Skira, 2007).