Georgia O'Keeffe and Her Houses: Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu by Barbara Buhler Lynes - Abrams

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE AND HER HOUSES

BARBARA BUHLER LYNES and AGAPITA JUDY LOPEZ

GHOST RANCH AND ABIQUIU

opposite

Georgia O’Keeffe Climbing Ladder, Ghost Ranch Patio, 1944 Photograph by Maria Chabot above

Ghost Ranch Patio with Ladder, 2010 Photograph by Paul Hester and Lisa Hardaway

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the ghost ranch house

O’Keeffe and Chabot shared a passion for nature and being outdoors, and they walked frequently amid the hills and badlands surrounding the Ghost Ranch house. They also took many painting/camping trips in the 1940s to areas that O’Keeffe wanted to paint, and they greatly enjoyed sleeping under the stars.

They spent many nights in sleeping bags on the Ghost Ranch roof and often viewed the world from the roof during the day. O’Keeffe described how much she enjoyed it in a letter to Stieglitz on 27 August 1938: “I’ve been up on the roof watching the moon come up— the sky very dark—the moon large and lopsided—and very soft—a strange white light

creeping across the far away to the dark sky—the cliffs all black—it was weird and strangely beautiful.”

When this photograph of the east section of the house was made (left), the walls were painted white from the roofline to an adobecolored “wainscoting.” From left to right we see the door of the kitchen, the pantry door, the door and two windows of the dining room, and the end of the banco that extends under the portal to its end. There is also a closed datura plant near a small table on the patio.

This recent photograph (above) shows a descendant of the original ladder O’Keeffe used to climb to the roof of the Ghost Ranch house.

patio and

portal

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I’ve been up on the roof watching the moon come up—the sky very dark—the moon large and lopsided—and very soft— a strange white light creeping across the far away to the dark sky—the cliffs all black—it was weird and strangely beautiful.

Georgia O’Keeffe Ladder to the Moon, 1958 Oil on canvas Courtesy Whitney Museum of American Art. CR 1335

The ladder became the subject of one of O’Keeffe’s best-known and most celebrated oil paintings, Ladder to the Moon. She referred to making it: “At the Ranch house there is a strong handmade ladder to the roof and when I first lived there I climbed it several times a day to look at the world all ‘round—the miles of cliff behind, the wide line of low mountain with a higher narrow flat top. It is very beautiful— tree covered with a bare spot in the shape of a leaping deer near the top. . . . One evening I was waiting for a friend and stood leaning against the ladder looking at the long dark line of the Pedernal. The sky was a pale greenish blue, the high moon looking white in the evening sky. Painting the ladder had been in my mind for a long time and there it was—with the dark Pedernal and the high white moon— all ready to be put down the next day.”

20. Georgia O’Keeffe, Georgia O’Keeffe, text opposite plate 102.

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the ghost ranch house

patio and

portal

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opposite

Georgia O’Keeffe at Ghost Ranch with Skull, 1948 or 1949 Photograph by Philippe Halsman; © Philippe Halsman Estate right

Georgia O’Keeffe at Ghost Ranch with Rocks, 1949 Photograph by Philippe Halsman; © Philippe Halsman Estate

O’Keeffe sits alone near the front of the patio (opposite), her head framed by a vast western sky streaked with clouds and the irregular contours of the cliffs behind her house. She wears a simple and comfortable black skirt and top over a white cotton shirt and a vaquero hat, her head wrapped in a white scarf that falls over her shoulders. In her lap she cradles one of the bleached animal skulls that became iconic in her work, and she is completely at ease and self-assured in the isolated remoteness of the world she has chosen for herself.

At right, framed by the triangle of the ladder leaning against the vertical columns of the portal, O’Keeffe studies rocks from her vast collection arranged on the small patio table. She greatly enjoyed these natural forms and arranged and rearranged them often. She wears the silver spiral pin Alexander Calder designed as a gift to her. It spells out her initials, and she often wore it when attending public events or posing for professional photographers.

the ghost ranch house

patio and

portal

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opposite

Yousuf Karsh Georgia O’Keeffe, 1956 Photograph by Yousuf Karsh; © Yousuf Karsh Estate above

Abiquiu Door and Zaguan at Night, 2010 Photograph by Paul Hester and Lisa Hardaway

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the abiquiu house

The zaguan served as a stage set for professional photographers who came to the house to make O’Keeffe the subject of their work, as can be see in this 1956 photograph by Yousuf Karsh.

She sits on the banco next to the zaguan’s open doors, under the same elk’s skull and antlers and next to a piece of driftwood.

Above is the zaguan at night with its door closed and latched. Metal animal traps that O’Keeffe used to catch raccoons and skunks in the garden hang along the door to the far left. The northeast bedroom door of the east wing is to the left of the banco, and a tree stump decorated with ram’s horns is next to the library door on the right.

the main entrance and zaguan

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below

Abiquiu Patio and Door, 2010 Photograph by Paul Hester and Lisa Hardaway opposite Georgia O’Keeffe

Black Door with Snow, 1955 Oil on canvas Courtesy private collection. CR 1279

Another photograph of the door provides a very different perspective, one that inspired O’Keeffe ’s Black Door with Snow. The painting is a rare example of a weather occurrence in O’Keeffe ’s work.³⁵ 35. Two other works that include weather occurrences are Storm Cloud, Lake George, 1923, and Kokopelli with Snow, 1942. See Lynes, CR, 437 and 1036.

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the abiquiu house

the

patio

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