Photo By Gail

In this work of pastel on paper, Goat’s Horns With Blue (1945), Georgia O’Keefe treats the spiral of a goat’s horn as both subject and lens, exploring its distinct materiality, and using it to frame the sky beyond. She found such horns and bones, which she collected in the new Mexican desert, to be “most wonderful against the blue — that blue that will always be there as it is now after all man’s destruction is finished” (a likely reference to World War II, which ended the year this work was made).

A studio photograph by Eliot Porter shows this work in process on an easel, where it appears larger than its ultimate composition, suggesting it was cut down prior to being completed.

Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art as Part of the Exhibit, To See Takes Time, on View Through August 12th, 2023.