Georgia O'Keeffe and bones

I watched the premiere of a 2-hour movie about American artist Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) that airs again on Lifetime tomorrow night. Like the reviewers, I had some issues with it, but it is worth watching. The film prompted me to have another look at her skull paintings and to see what she said about bones:

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"When I found the beautiful white bones in the desert I picked them up and took them home. I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it."

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"Sun-bleached bones were most wonderful against the blue - the blue that will always be there as it is now after all man's destruction is finished."

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"The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert even though it is vast and empty and untouchable and knows no kindness with all its beauty."

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In the process, I found the portraits above in which O'Keeffe is depicted with vertebrae and skulls. None of these was taken by her husband, American photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946). The 1st was taken by Philippe Hausman in 1967, the 2nd by John Candelario in 1942, and the 3rd by Arnold Newman in 1968.