"Many things are so beautiful that they don’t seem real. My idea of the world—nature—things that grow...has not been beautiful enough."
—Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz,
February – March 1939

 

 

 

 

On January 30, 1939, Georgia O’Keeffe embarked on a nine-week sojourn to Hawaii, a transformative experience that inspired some of the most visually alluring paintings of her career. Marking a pivotal moment in the legendary artist’s singular practice, Crab’s Claw Ginger Hawaii is among the most iconic works of the 22 paintings she created based on her time in the Aloha State. Of these, 14 reside in museum collections, including the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Honolulu Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. A striking painting by a pioneering figure of American Modernism making its auction debut, Crab’s Claw Ginger Hawaii captures O’Keeffe’s adventurous spirit and passion for the natural world, expressed through her distinctive visual language. 

 

"I have such a fantastic flower that some one gave me yesterday—am taking it along—it is sort of dry and flat but lovely red and green and yellow—a variety of ginger..."
—Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz, from Wailuku, Maui, March 28, 1939

 

 

O’Keeffe’s trip to Hawaii began as a commission by New York advertising firm N. W. Ayer & Son to produce images for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, now Dole. Though typically hesitant to take on such commissions, O’Keeffe accepted, drawn to the seductive appeal of the Islands and her passion for travel. Crab’s Claw Ginger Hawaii was one of the two works ultimately selected for the print campaign—along with Pineapple Bud, Private Collection—which appeared in Vogue and the Saturday Evening Post, among other outlets. Further testifying to its emblematic stature, the present work most recently featured as the key highlight of the formative New York Botanical Garden exhibition, Georgia O’Keeffe: Visions of Hawaii, from 2018 to 2019, published as the catalogue cover as well as in the related article by the New York Times.

 

 

 

 

 

For O’Keeffe, what started as a critical assignment in the Hawaiian Islands would become a profound opportunity to channel her love for nature beyond borders in a radically new environment. From the streams trickling down the ‘Īao Valley in the west of Maui, to sea arches near Hāna in the east; from the richly abundant flora to traditional Hawaiian fishhooks (makau), O’Keeffe found exuberant inspiration in the tropical Hawaiian landscape. In her letters to Stieglitz, she frequently described her captivation with the floral life of the Islands, marveling at its beauty. As she once stated, “Wish you could see it—so many of the flowers just simply seem unbelievable...”ⁱ

 

 

 

 

In the present work, O’Keeffe depicts a lushly colored heliconia, a relative of ginger, set against the expansive Hawaiian sky and distant marine horizon. Unlike her earlier flower compositions, the sky plays a significant role here. As Jennifer Saville observed of O’Keeffe’s Hawaiian pictures, “The configuration of flower, sky, horizon, and sea differ in each, but the component parts remain the same; seemingly symbolic of Hawaii, they encapsulate the spirit of the islands with their exotic vegetation and endless space.”ⁱⁱ

 

 

 

 

 

Crab’s Claw Ginger Hawaii is especially distinguished by its expressive manifestation of O’Keeffe’s Surrealist sensibility, rarely seen this distinctly in her oeuvre. The work’s surreal character at once prefigures and conjures René Magritte’s La troisième dimension of 1942, as well as his own commissioned advertisement, Exciting Perfumes by Mem, 1946. Stripping away any enveloping foliage, she bestows the heliconia with a monumental presence against the sea and sky. A single elongated leaf anchored at the left counterbalances the flower’s diagonal thrust, infusing the subject with life and a sense of movement. Atypical of her floral works, which generally maintain a more static presence, this remarkably dynamic composition brings to mind the forceful energy of Brâncuși’s Bird in Space.

 

 

 

 

 

Further lending to the work’s dreamlike quality, O’Keeffe abstracts the surface of the flower’s bracts, rendered smooth with the striking employment of bold, luminous color. The radicality of this composition presages much of the contemporary art impulses of today, as seen in the works of a new generation of cutting-edge female artists, including Emily Mae Smith and Loie Hollowell. 

 

 

 

 

 

Throughout her prolific career, O’Keeffe drew from her memory and imagination to conceive paintings that capture “the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it.”ⁱⁱⁱ Beginning in New York in the 1920s; to New Mexico in 1929 through her lifetime; to the Hawaiian Islands in 1939; and later to Peru and Japan in 1959, O’Keeffe continuously mined the natural world to create some of the most iconic works of the 20^th century that resonate through the present. The artist’s larger-than-life spirit, distinguished painterly vernacular, and lyrical vision of Hawaii manifest themselves most spectacularly in Crab’s Claw Ginger Hawaii. “I often think of that trip at Yosemite as one of the best things I have done – but Hawaii was another,” she wrote upon her departure from the Islands.i^v  “Out there was sort of a dream land.”^v

 

 

 

 

In O’Keeffe’s Words

 

 

 

 

 

 

Property from the Collection of Thurston and Sharon Twigg-Smith, Honolulu

 

The important history of Crab’s Claw Ginger Hawaii is paired perfectly in this case with the story of its owners, Sharon Twigg-Smith and her late husband, Thurston Twigg-Smith, members of a prominent, fifth-generation Hawaiian family known for their philanthropy and contributions to the arts across institutional and cultural bounds. Mr. Twigg-Smith, frequently called “Twigg,” was a larger than life figure whose legendary impact on the state of Hawaii was matched perhaps only by his genuine love for art and the community. After a decorated military career, including the storming of Normandy during World War II, he returned to his home state and propelled the Honolulu Advertiser into Hawaii's leading newspaper. Coalescing his endeavors in the arts with his business acumen, Twigg notably transformed The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu from a corporate gallery into a public museum, now known as the Honolulu Museum of Art Spalding House. Among the many other institutions they supported are the Hawaii Theatre Center, Historic Hawaii Foundation, Punahou School, and Yale University Art Gallery, where they gifted masterpieces such as Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park #24 and Wayne Thiebaud’s Drink Syrups as well as other major works of modern and contemporary art.

 

 

 

ⁱ Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz, Honolulu, February 16-18, 1939.
ⁱⁱ Jennifer Saville, Georgia O’Keeffe: Paintings of Hawai’i, exh. cat., Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1990, p. 31.
ⁱⁱⁱ Georgia O’Keeffe, quoted in Elizabeth H. Turner, Georgia O'Keeffe: The Poetry of Things, Washington, D.C., 1999, p. vi.
^iv Georgia O’Keeffe to Ansel Adams, Honolulu, April 14, 1939.
^v Georgia O’Keeffe to Alfred Stieglitz, en route from Los Angeles to San Francisco, April 21, 1939.