
Red and Pink Rocks and Teeth
1938
Georgia O’Keeffe was fascinated by the animal bones, weathered and worn, that she found in the desert in New Mexico. In Red and Pink Rocks and Teeth she presented a jawbone alongside two stacked rocks that appear both monumental and indeterminate. The smooth, rounded forms of the red and pink rocks appear in enigmatic relation to one another, as the red pebble appears to recede from the picture plane even though it must be perched on top of the pink stone. Their abstracted forms and warm colors contrast sharply with the bleached, angular teeth and hard, cracked appearance of the jawbone and together construct a modern trompe l’oeil that questions the nature of representation and perception.
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Location
- Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
More by Georgia O'Keeffe
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Artists in conversation

Marsden Hartley
American · b. 1877

Hartley painted natural objects like rocks and bones from the American landscape with bold, warm colors and simplified monumental forms that echo the weighty abstracted quality of this jawbone and stone composition.

Arthur Dove
American · b. 1880

Dove transformed natural forms into smooth rounded organic abstractions rendered in warm earth tones, closely paralleling how this painting dissolves desert rocks and bone into enigmatic biomorphic shapes.

Peter Blume
American · b. 1906

Blume depicted natural and geological objects with precise smooth surfaces and mysterious spatial relationships, sharing the same quality of familiar natural forms rendered strange and monumental as seen in this rocks and teeth composition.
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