She painted her first bone and skull paintings when transit Uranus was opposite her natal Venus-Uranus conjunction, 1930-1931. Transit Saturn was squaring the same conjunction, and transit Pluto was trining her Jupiter, Ascendant, and Sun in Scorpio. It was time for her to break free of old structures, and to liberate more of her artistic genius.
The bone paintings created a sensation like her flower paintings had done in the 1920s, and her work was again interpreted by some critics through Freudian lenses seeing them as symbols of ‘death, despair, and destruction’.1Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life, by Roxana Robinson, 1990. Kindle edition p. 367
O’Keeffe did not agree with the critics. To her, the bones were very lively. ‘The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even tho’ it is vast and empty and untouchable — and knows no kindness with all its beauty’.2Ibid. p. 365. From Exhibition Catalogue An American Place, 1939.
All of this happened in addition while she was moving into her personal crises with her husband: ‘It was a time when she was scraping down her life to its sparest, hardest essence, when she was removing the soft tendrils of emotion, cutting out the tender core of vulnerability. That was the moment in which she chose to paint the bones’.3See note 1.
✩
In astrology, bones are associated with the planet Saturn symbolising the dense, underlying structure allowing physical movement to take place. When Saturn squares other planets in the chart, we are asked to let go of past conditionings in order to evolve. Saturn transits will let us know whether our structures are built on solid ground or not. Saturn is also ‘about giving yourself the time to build something substantial’.4Bracha Goldsmith, astrologer and artist.
When Georgia decided to leave her husband half of every year, she also chose her work to be the most important thing in her life. ‘O’Keeffe believed that work was the antidote for unhappiness, that in fact it was the only way to real happiness and fulfilment.’5Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life, by Roxana Robinson, 1990. Kindle edition p. 358
In that she was subscribing to a work ethic that had pervaded the industrialised world since the birth of capitalism. And yet, she was also giving herself time and space to build something substantial on her own terms.
In 1931 she painted her mildly ironic contribution to the cultural conversation about the great American work of art. It was her first skull painting.
‘[It] was at the time that the men were all talking about the great American novel, the great American play, the great American… it was the great American everything.
So I thought:
I’ll make my picture
A red, white, and blue
I’ll make it an American painting
For these people
That don’t go across the Hudson’
—Georgia O’Keeffe 6From the documentary Georgia O’Keefe, 1977, by Perry Miller Adato
Cow’s Scull with Red, White, and Blue, 1931
*
Was it a silent cry From the generous cows Descended from higher planes To offer us their precious milk Did she deliver a message From their bones Offering to bridge the gap Between the reds and the blues A bold flag May be appropriate For a Pluto return She was just beyond her time
✩