O'Keeffe's Pineapples　-Murakami radio-

       The pineapple reminds me of the American painter Georgia O'Keeffe. This is not because she painted pictures of the fruit, on the contrary, she never painted one. O'Keeffe stayed in Hawaii for three months in 1938. She was invited by the Dole Company, famous for its canned pineapples, which made a very generous offer: it would pay all her expenses, so she could live in Hawaii as long as she liked and paint one pineapple picture to use in an advertisement. O'Keeffe accepted the offer, partly to heal from the pain of her divorce, and came to Hawaii on a cruise ship, traveling from island to island and painting all over. Everything she saw was fresh and stimulated her creativity. Mainly plants caught her attention. Belladonna, hibiscus, plumeria, ginger, lotus - many beautiful paintings were created during her stay. Yet she did not paint pineapples. Why? You might ask. I think so too. Why not just paint a pineapple? I don't know the technical details, but it shouldn't be a particularly difficult object to draw. They are not asking for anything like 'Please give us a scene of a giant squid and a giant octopus wrestling in the middle of the night in a four-and-a-half tatami mat'.

But she ended up quickly returning to the mainland without a single pineapple painting. Artists are sensitive, capricious, and difficult to deal with. I suppose you could say she was just irresponsible. However, the Dole company was left with no choice. They sent a pineapple tree to her New York home. Now, let's get her to draw this. O'Keeffe was reluctant to go this far, so she reluctantly drew a picture of a pineapple and sent it to Hawaii. But it was not a picture of a fruit, as Dole had hoped, but a picture of a pretty bud of a pineapple flower. Along with it, she also sent a painting of a ginger flower. Both were beautiful pictures, but not suitable for canned food advertising.

I don't know why, but she must have hated painting pineapples. However, these two paintings probably fetch a great price nowadays, so the Dole company must have easily recouped the expenses they spent on inviting her. You have to look at things in the long run to see the gains and losses.

When I read stories like this, I think that even I would like to do something daring like this at least once. But I can't do it, it's just my natural disposition. If it were me, when I arrived in Hawaii, I would just draw a picture of pineapple for the time being, fulfill my duty and then do whatever I wanted. But Ms. O'Keeffe is not like that, she lives her life as she pleases, in a state of "hmm, I paint what I want to paint, how I want to paint it. She lives her life as she pleases, in a state of "what's a pineapple? I envy her, but I also worry about how hard it must be for her. While enjoying a pineapple as a snack, I felt that the character of people is not something that can be solved by logic.

This Week in Murakami

A sign that reads, "Beware of Kapparai." Someone painted "Rai" with a magic marker. Someone has a lot of free time.