Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue 1931

Curator: Before us is Georgia O’Keeffe’s "Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue," painted in 1931. It’s currently housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What's your immediate reaction? Editor: Haunting, but also… festive? Like a morbid July Fourth picnic. It’s both monumental and strangely vulnerable, isn’t it? The colors make it almost…patriotic. Curator: The choice of the cow skull is fascinating considering the time and her location. During the Depression era, O’Keeffe was in New Mexico, amidst the vastness of the desert landscape. These bones were readily available. Editor: Bones became like flowers for her, or the other architectural details she captured. But there's an undeniable statement here too. It's decay celebrated with the colours of a flag. Is she interrogating national ideals of progress or endurance? Maybe poking fun at consumerism and death using national colours. It has that touch. Curator: I would say the emphasis on using oil-paint adds to this analysis, giving a shine, texture and materiality which gives importance to what she's capturing, an emblem of a consumeristic America. Also, let's be frank: bones were *cheap.* Accessible, mass produced even. The opposite of fine art. She elevates discarded materials. Editor: True. It does force a reckoning, doesn’t it? To elevate something discarded. I find that tension–the starkness of death dressed up in celebration–really arresting. It makes you ask, What do we choose to venerate? Is she telling that decay is always under the surface? And also giving it a poetic place. Curator: I think there is a great discussion in her practice, from the chosen subjects, which have symbolic and political value and the usage of accessible, industrial materials such as oil-paint. In any way it opens a discussion in class differences. Editor: Absolutely. I’ll never look at the flag the same way again, to be honest! What do you make of it after this dissection? Curator: The art challenges preconceptions about value, elevating both overlooked materials and marginalized experiences. The colours contrast the topic which gives space for criticism and debate. Editor: It still makes me feel uneasy, in a good way. Art that provokes – even if it is slightly morbid – is art that lives.