Brooklyn Bridge

Referring to the present work and Georgia O'Keeffe's oil painting Brooklyn Bridge (1949, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York), Lewis Kachur writes, "O'Keeffe's sketch and painting of the Bridge feature formal inventions which rival those of Joseph Stella. In both works, one of the Bridge's towers is coequal with the framing edges, and...the arches are tapered by the cables behind them. In the sketch, the top of the other tower is visible at the lower center, as if the front tower were transparent, or as if two views had been telescoped onto one sheet. This simultaneity imparts a complex and mysterious power to the drawing. In contrast, the painting is distant and detached, with the tower overwhelming the thin, spidery cables and flattening the pictorial space. Since these works were done just before she left New York to live in New Mexico, O'Keeffe may have intended for the Bridge to serve as a symbol of the city of her early career." ("The Bridge As Icon," The Great East River Bridge, 1883-1983, exhibition catalogue, Brooklyn, New York, 1983, pp. 169-70)