Isabella Flores
Georgia O'Keeffe was an American artist who played a pivotal role in the development of American modernism. Her paintings of flowers, barren landscapes, and close-up still lifes have become iconic. O'Keeffe's work was largely independent of major art movements, and she sought to capture the emotion and power of objects through abstracting the natural world. She was influenced by the revolutionary ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow, who emphasised composition over imitation, and this led her to develop a unique style of painting. O'Keeffe's work has attracted the attention of subsequent generations of artists and art lovers, and her legacy includes over 900 paintings.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Artistic style | A combination of abstract and realistic |
| Artistic influences | Arthur Wesley Dow, Stieglitz Circle (including Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Paul Strand, Edward Steichen), Japanese painting |
| Subjects | Flowers, barren landscapes, close-up still lifes, bones, skulls, New York skyscrapers, clouds, sky, mountain peaks of Peru and Japan’s Mount Fuji |
| Artistic philosophy | "I have but one desire as a painter - that is to paint what I see, as I see it, in my own way, without regard for the desires or taste of the professional dealer or the professional collector." |
| Artistic output | More than 2000 works, including 900 paintings, drawings, and works in pencil, charcoal, pastel, and watercolour |
| Accolades | Membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Medal of Freedom, and the National Medal of Arts |
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What You'll Learn
The influence of Arthur Wesley Dow
The American modernist painter Georgia O'Keeffe was influenced by Arthur Wesley Dow, an East Coast painter inspired by Japanese art. Dow emphasised the ideal over the real, teaching his students to design pleasing landscapes from simple forms rather than copying exactly what they saw.
O'Keeffe first encountered Dow's ideas in 1912 when she took a summer school course at the University of Virginia with Alon Bement, who had embraced Dow's principles. Dow's philosophy liberated O'Keeffe from the "slavish pursuit of realism". She began to develop her unique style, experimenting with abstraction and creating expressive, abstracted combinations of shapes and lines.
Dow preached the power of line, tone, and colour, and what he called "filling space in a beautiful way". This emphasis on the ideal and the power of line, tone, and colour can be seen in O'Keeffe's work, where she simplified natural forms into abstracted shapes and lines.
O'Keeffe's stylised landscapes also owe much to Dow's work. Dow created many paintings, drawings, and prints depicting rural and wilderness areas of the United States. Similarly, O'Keeffe's paintings of the deserts of New Mexico, which she first visited in 1929, emphasise the feeling of being in the desert rather than the objective appearance of rocks and sand.
Dow's influence on O'Keeffe was significant, and his teachings helped liberate her from traditional ways of thinking about art, allowing her to develop her unique style and make her mark as one of the most important American artists of the 20th century.
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Flowers and botanical studies
Georgia O'Keeffe is best known for her close-up, large-scale paintings of flowers, which she created from the mid-1920s to the 1950s. She painted about 200 flower paintings out of the more than 2,000 paintings she made in her career. Her flower paintings include Oriental Poppies, several Red Canna paintings, and Petunia No. 2 (1924), which is considered her first large-scale flower painting.
O'Keeffe's flower paintings were influenced by Arthur Wesley Dow, who focused on capturing the essence and feeling of an object rather than its exact image. She also drew inspiration from modernist photography techniques, such as close-cropping, which she learned from Paul Strand and others. Her flower paintings often depicted flowers in close-up, as if seen through a magnifying lens, with a focus on the internal view of the flowers, including their stamen and reproductive areas. This has led some critics to interpret her work as a reference to female genitalia and sexuality, an idea that was fuelled by controversial nude photographs of O'Keeffe taken by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, and displayed publicly. However, O'Keeffe herself denied that her work was intended to reference female sexuality, stating that the colour and form of the flowers were more important than the subject matter. She commented:
> I thought you could write something about me that men can't [...] I do not know [...] I have no definite idea of what it should be. But a woman who has lived many things and who sees lines and colours as an expression of living – might say something that a man can't. I feel there is something unexplored about women that only a woman can explore. Men have done all they can do about it.
O'Keeffe's flower paintings can be seen as a way to distinguish herself from her contemporary male artists and present herself as an uninhibited "modern" woman and vanguard artist. Her work challenged stereotypes about women artists and feminine otherness while also reinforcing the view that women personify sensuality, feeling, and fecundity. Several feminist critics have praised O'Keeffe's work as capturing feminist themes ahead of their time, and during the 1970s, feminist groups championed her as a feminist icon.
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New York skyscrapers
Georgia O'Keeffe is one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, renowned for her contribution to modern art. She is known for her paintings of New York skyscrapers, which were essentially a symbol of modernity. O'Keeffe created a series of paintings of skyscrapers in New York City between 1925 and 1929. During this time, she lived in an apartment on the 30th floor of the Shelton Hotel, which gave her expansive views of the city.
O'Keeffe's work on New York skyscrapers captures the "mystique of the skyscrapers", which were a symbol of the modern world and, at the time, a largely American phenomenon. Her paintings of these structures convey awe and light, as well as a sense of individual perspective. O'Keeffe's work on the subject is notable for its use of a human vantage point, often tilting to look up from the sidewalk or out through the windows of her apartment. This viewpoint can create a sense of ambivalence or even ominousness, as seen in her painting City Night (1926), where the viewer is placed at eye level beneath towering buildings, suggesting a feeling of anxiety or anonymity in a crowd.
One of O'Keeffe's most notable works on New York skyscrapers is Radiator Building—Night, New York, which depicts the American Radiator Building. This painting demonstrates her skill in the Precisionist style, with its simplified style and realistic depiction of the architectural building. The upper floors of the building resemble steps, illuminated at night with bright lights. Another notable work is New York Street with Moon (1925), which reflects O'Keeffe's opinion that "one can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt". This painting captures the sunset between the city's skyscrapers, with a moon and fluffy clouds.
O'Keeffe's paintings of New York skyscrapers were a significant part of her early career, and they showcase her ability to convey the power of human ingenuity and the sense of awe inspired by these monumental structures. Her work on this subject matter also highlights her unique perspective and style, which would continue to evolve as she travelled and explored new subjects, such as the landscapes of the Southwest and her aerial views of clouds and sky.
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Landscapes and nature
Georgia O'Keeffe is best known for her paintings of flowers and desert landscapes. She played an important part in the development of modern art in America, becoming the first female painter to gain recognition in New York's male-dominated art world in the 1920s. Her unique approach to painting nature, simplifying its shapes and forms, led to her being called a pioneer.
O'Keeffe's work remained largely independent of major art movements. She sought to capture the emotion and power of objects through abstracting the natural world. Her paintings often depicted the landscapes and environments in which she lived, including the desert-inspired landscapes of New Mexico, where she lived for 40 years.
O'Keeffe's fascination with the landscape of New Mexico began in 1929, when she visited the state for the first time. The stark landscape and Native American and Hispanic cultures of the region inspired a new direction in her art. She was particularly drawn to the dramatic desert landscape with its rugged mountains, unusual geological formations, vivid colours, clarity of light, and exotic vegetation. She often painted the rocks, cliffs, and mountains in dramatic close-up, just as she had done with her flower subjects. One of her favourite settings was a site she nicknamed the "Black Place", which she interpreted both panoramically and in tight views emphasising the ragged juncture of two hills.
In addition to the landscapes themselves, O'Keeffe was fascinated by the bones and skulls she found in the desert landscapes of New Mexico. She collected these bones and skulls and made them a subject in her work, often juxtaposing them with the landscape in her paintings. She became enamoured with animal skulls, capturing their essential nature while referencing the transience of life. Isolated on the canvas, divorced from its desert context, O'Keeffe's use of the cow skull and the red, white, and blue background in her painting "Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue" (1931) represents both naturalism and nationalism, or the relationship between the American landscape and national identity. The subject could also allude to the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, making an environmental and economic statement.
In the 1950s, O'Keeffe began to travel internationally, painting and sketching the mountain peaks of Peru and Japan's Mount Fuji. At the age of 73, she took on a new subject: aerial views of clouds and sky. She continued to paint until she was 90 years old, enlisting the help of several assistants due to her failing eyesight.
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Feminine imagery and feminism
Georgia O'Keeffe is one of the most significant artists of the 20th century, renowned for her contribution to modern art. She is especially known for her paintings of flowers and desert landscapes, which she painted in a unique and new way, simplifying their shapes and forms. O'Keeffe's work has been interpreted in various ways, including as displays of flamboyant female sexuality.
O'Keeffe's paintings of flowers have been particularly influential on the artists of the Feminist art movement, including Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro, who saw feminine imagery in these works. O'Keeffe herself disavowed interpretations of her work that focused solely on sexuality, preferring to let viewers interpret her paintings in their own way. However, it is important to note that O'Keeffe's work was a product of her own experiences and perspective as a woman. Her paintings often explored the relationship between women and nature, and how women's bodies and sexuality were perceived and portrayed in society.
O'Keeffe's unique style and subject matter challenged traditional notions of femininity and beauty, offering a new perspective on what it meant to be a woman. Her paintings of flowers, for example, were not simply depictions of beautiful objects, but explorations of the complex and often contradictory ways in which women's bodies and sexuality were viewed and valued in society. O'Keeffe's work invited viewers to consider the power and agency of women, and the ways in which they could challenge and subvert traditional gender roles and expectations.
In addition to her paintings of flowers, O'Keeffe also created a series of architectural pictures that depicted New York City's soaring skyscrapers and aerial views. These paintings, too, have been interpreted through a feminist lens, as they challenged the male-dominated world of architecture and urban planning and offered a female perspective on the modern city. O'Keeffe's work in this series was influenced by her time in New York, where she experienced the pleasures of urban social life and the freedom and independence that came with it.
O'Keeffe's commitment to her art and her willingness to challenge conventions extended beyond her work. She was known for her strong and independent personality, which was shaped in part by her family's emphasis on self-reliance. O'Keeffe prioritised her art above all else, even giving up dancing because it interfered with her painting. This dedication to her craft and her willingness to make sacrifices for her art further emphasised the empowering and transformative message that her work conveyed to women.
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Frequently asked questions
O'Keeffe was inspired by the landscapes she encountered on her extensive travels, including the desert landscapes of the American Southwest, the mountain peaks of Peru and Japan, and the aerial views of clouds from aeroplanes. She also drew inspiration from the work of photographer Paul Strand and the revolutionary ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow, who emphasised composition over imitation.
O'Keeffe is known for her unique style that combines abstraction with realism. She focused on capturing the emotion and power of objects through abstracting natural forms, simplifying their shapes and forms. She was also interested in finding the "essential, abstract forms in nature".
O'Keeffe is best known for her paintings of flowers and desert landscapes, as well as her depictions of New York skyscrapers. She also painted still lifes, bones, and aerial views of clouds and sky.
O'Keeffe's flower paintings have often been interpreted as displays of flamboyant female sexuality. However, O'Keeffe herself disavowed this interpretation, and her work has also been seen as a form of feminine imagery that inspired artists of the Feminist art movement.
Yes, O'Keeffe faced challenges due to her failing eyesight, which eventually led to blindness. Despite this, she continued to create art with the help of assistants until the end of her life. She also experienced a downturn in popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, but her career was revived by a retrospective held by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1970.
