AFRGA1 L010

AFR6-8 March 2020The Australian Financial Review | www.afr.com

L10 Life&Leisure

TRAVEL UNITED STATES

O’Keeffe countryThe pioneering painter’s New Mexico sanctuarydraws artists to this day, writes Kate Hennessy.

Above, from top left: Santa Fe’s distinctive Pueblo Revival adobe architecture; GeorgiaO’Keeffe poses outdoors beside her work ‘Pelvis Series – Red With Yellow’ in 1960.

●iWhere to stay

Eldorado Hoteland Spa309 West SanFrancisco Street,Santa Fe (a blockfrom the GeorgiaO’Keeffe Museum).

Rates Rooms from$US159 ($240).Tel: +1 505 988 4455

Above: The ruggedNew Mexicolandscape,accessible byhorseback, and thecenturies-old nativeAmerican traditionsinspired the artist.PHOTOS: GETTY,KATE HENNESSY

Far left: The GeorgiaO’Keeffe Museum inSanta Fe; the artistwith her petsoutside her GhostRanch home in 1966.

Some call painter Georgia O’Keeffe themother of American modernism. TheGeorgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe – oneof just a few in the world dedicated to afemale artist – describes her simply as oneof the most significant artists of the 20thcentury. Either way, her paintings of flowersand New Mexico landscapes, in particular,are luminous and unforgettable.

‘‘There is a huge interest in O’Keeffe’s lifebeyond her art,’’ says the museum’s curatorof fine art, Ariel Plotek. ‘‘She came torepresent a kind of badass American icon –who also made her own clothes.’’

Images of her are entwined with hericonic status as an artist, and transfix us still.She modelled in photographs taken by herhusband, Alfred Stieglitz, and others, fromher 30s until her 90s, presenting her ownimage to the end – without makeup andsartorially minimalist.

Themuseumisan immersionin144ofherworks.But it is busyandyouimagineO’Keeffe–wholived inanisolatedhaciendacalledGhostRanch untilshewas96,paintinginsolitudebar visits fromartworlddoyenssuchas AndyWarholandAnselAdams–may herselfhavesteeredclear.

Outsideinthesharp,high-altitudesun,however,youcansoakintheenchantmentayoungO’KeeffefeltonfirstvisitingSantaFein1917, thatmanyothershavefelt too.Artistshavemovedheresinceitsdaysasaburgeoningartcolonyintheearly1900s.Despitebeingthefourth-biggestcityinNewMexico,SantaFe–population84,000–isthethird-largestartmarketintheUSafterNewYorkandLosAngeles.

There is no diluting the glut of art in a cityso small; its streets bulge with galleries fromthe quirky to the high end. In the historicdistrict of Canyon Road, especially,everything appears artful.

Canvases hang on external walls,throbbing colour in the sun, and sculpturesloll about on corners and in gardens.

‘‘It’s a friendly scene in Santa Fe,’’ saysElaine Ritchel, the local guide on ourexploratory art-themed tour run by AtlasObscura. ‘‘It’s OK to browse and askquestions of the gallerists.’’

The city’s strikingly uniform adobearchitecture stems from a 1950s zoning lawenforcing the Pueblo Revival style, whichcomes in ochre and earth tones only. Strungand hung everywhere are lustrous clustersof red chillies (a New Mexico traditioncalled ristras) and even a slight breeze setsthe silver-green leaves of the aspen treestwirling. The cottonwood foliage is asyellow as the fluffy chamisa plant, bloomingfrom any available dirt to announceautumn’s arrival.

After dusk, in Santa Fe, the sky doesn’t somuch darken as dim to a velvety navy blue.

Up on Museum Hill, institutions such asthe Museum of International Folk Art andthe Museum of Indian Arts and Culture viefor your attention between giddying viewsof the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ)Mountains.

And along the plaza-facing wall of ThePalace of the Governors, members of NewMexico’s 23 sovereign Indian nations havebeen selling their craft and jewellery for

more than 60 years, as part of a NativeAmerican vendors’ program. ‘‘You knowyou’re buying from the family directly,’’Ritchel says.

It’s not all art appreciation. ‘‘Margarita?’’restaurant employees ask, pouring theirtwist on the city’s signature cocktail. And at2130 metres above sea level, one packs thepunch of two.

Yet to truly understand the area’s pull forartists, Ritchel believes you need to placeyourself in the landscape itself. In herwelcome note she writes of her desertdrives, as a kid, in her mother’s Mustangconvertible. ‘‘Wind whipping around us, I’dstare up at the tangle of stars as we hurtledthrough the blackness. The landscape, skyand light are not just elements of thebackdrop in New Mexico, they’reprotagonists themselves.’’

Early one morning we exit Santa Fe’sporous city limits as they smudge outwardsto the high-desert plains. At the far easternedge of the Colorado Plateau ‘‘O’Keeffecountry’’ begins with the multicolouredcliffs and canyons she painted so often.

‘‘I knew the minute I got up here that thiswas where I would live,’’ she told The NewYorker in 1974.

A cowgirl in chaps awaits us at the GhostRanch corral. The horses are saddled as sheflips through the paintings we’re here to seein three-dimensional form. The juniper tree,too, that O’Keeffe misidentified in her 1937work, Cedar Tree with Lavender Hills. ‘‘Ajuniper is much hardier and can take 900years to decay,’’ the cowgirl says. ‘‘So the treelooks the same today as it did 80 years agowhen she painted it.’’

We hoof off towards the hacienda withthe chief wrangler, Dan Ramsey, half-drawling, half-hollering some key O’Keeffestories, radiating exactly the enigmaticcharisma a handsome cowboy should.

But we don’t make it. A couple ofkilometres in, the wind picks up, spinningdislodged shale in little tornadoes andvibrating the sagebrush, spooking ourhorses.

O’Keeffe’s view of Cerro Pedernal – theflat-topped mesa she painted 28 times andwhere her ashes were scattered in 1986 –must wait until next time.

Or not. ‘‘Georgia didn’t want us there,’’a fellow traveller says, wryly, and I findmyself liking the idea of her posthumouslydefying us.

In any case, O’Keeffe country is all around– flinty, wild and bright – and no singletangible sight could bring her any closer.Perhaps she was made to be mythic; aconstruct of other people’s tales.

Like Ramsey, who you suspect O’Keeffewould have liked. He didn’t know muchabout her when he came to Ghost Ranch, headmits. ‘‘I’m more into French Impression,Monet, and cave paintings, prehistoric;I have them tattooed all over me,’’ he says.

‘‘ButI’vecome toreallyappreciateaspectsofMissO’Keeffe, like theprivacything.WhenI getoffwork Isitatmy picnictableandwatchthesungo downandthestarscomeoutandI just wanttobeleftalone.’’ L&L

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The writer was a guest of Atlas Obscura tours.