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As soon as Georgia O’Keeffe was shown Ghost Ranch, she knew it was the place for her.
A remote area in the shadow of the mountains north of Santa Fe in New Mexico would be his summer residence for many years – a place that delighted him, inspired several paintings and is where his ashes were scattered. He said: “I knew the moment I got here that this was where I was going to live.”
Now, a new exhibition at the Courtauld will highlight O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch home and how it shaped his art and life.
Around a dozen works that have never been shown in the UK will make up the exhibition, called Georgia O’Keeffe: Ghost Ranch, which will open in October 2027.
Dr Karen Serres, chief curator of art at the Courtauld Gallery, told the Guardian that few people in the UK are aware of Ghost Ranch’s role in the development of one of the great American modern artists of the 20th century.
“Ghost Ranch was an important part of his life, and it illuminates a large part of his art,” Serres said.
“For example, in his flower paintings, where he goes really, really, really close to saying, ‘I want to do that because I want to make people look at things that have been overlooked. He does the same thing in these areas.”
O’Keeffe moved to the property, which was part of a 21,000-acre estate, in 1934, initially renting a room there before buying it and making it his permanent home.
“As soon as I saw it, that was my world,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this before, but it fit me exactly.
The Ghost Ranch was one of two homes that O’Keeffe lived in New Mexico. The other was a house in the village of Abiquiú, 16 kilometers south of the farm, where it is located kept open to people.
Ghost Ranch is not open to the public but it was somewhere that O’Keeffe “I always felt at home”, according to Calvin Tomkins of the New Yorker, who profiled him in 1974.
He wrote: “Loneliness, quietness and the most dry, dry and beautiful place in the world. “Animal skulls and white horns hang on the walls of his porch, and the stones he carries on his walks and sleep trips overflow the tables and low shelves.”
O’Keeffe added to the mystery surrounding Ghost Ranch when he revealed in an interview that the house had killed people before he bought it, as well as many of his famous photos – including. Cecil Beaton of Vogue – it happened there.
Despite his international reputation, O’Keeffe’s works have not been seen in the UK; Serres says that only six of the twelve works exhibited at the Courtauld had previously been exhibited in Britain.
O’Keeffe’s reputation in the UK has not been very high.
After his Hayward show in 1993, British male critics released it a stream of unpleasant comments. He has been called a “commercial photographer”, an “unknown actor”, an artist who “created the best pictures of the month in calendars” and “more and more”.
Twenty years later, before the exhibition at the Tate in 2016, one of the main issues was that the exhibition wanted to challenge “a restrained man” he thinks that his pictures of flowers were pictures of female genitals.
Serres said that the Ghost Ranch exhibition is another opportunity for many people to learn more about an artist who is often misunderstood or whose work is created in response to male critics.
“She’s known as a fascinating female artist,” Serres said. “But seeing his work, and understanding what he’s saying, I don’t think we’re there yet.”
