Georgia OKeeffes Flower Paintings and Their Critical Reception in the 1920s - Term Paper Example

and Number of the Teacher’s Georgia O’Keeffe’s Flower Paintings and their Critical Reception in the 1920s Introduction The American artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was a nature enthusiast from an early age, with a great liking for flowers which she studied closely. O’Keeffe sought seclusion and solitude, time to think and closeness to nature. Born in a remote part of America, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, she was raised in the neighboring farming country. According to Willard (95), the artist believed that the Middle West being a healthy and normal part of America contributed to her development as an artist. At the age of fifteen, O’Keeffe moved with her family to Williamsburg, Virginia. She studied art from 1905 to 1912, and took up teaching for two years, in the Texas Panhandle, where she found the vast, dry country with heavy winds to be remarkable in its beauty (Goodrich and Bry 9). “A trip to northern New Mexico renewed a passion for sky, mountains, and magnificent vistas” (Harvey 36) earlier experienced when teaching in west Texas fifteen years ago”. O’Keeffe loved her country America, and its natural beauty in all its manifestations. As an artist, “the sun and sky; mountains and plains; trees, plants, and flowers were her frequent subjects” (Davidson 62). With great clarity and vibrancy, she revealed these as dynamic, growing forms, and not as stationary objects. Her flower paintings are particularly noteworthy in their sheer numbers, over 200, as well as in their beauty, realistic depictions, magnification to a huge size, and close examination of their form. Although Georgia O’Keeffe always denied using symbolism in her flower paintings, the public and critics of the time viewed the flowers as an expression of eroticism. Thesis Statement: The purpose of this paper is to investigate Georgia O’Keeffe’s flower paintings, and examine their critical reception in the 1920s. The Modernist Style of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Flower Paintings O’Keeffe did not use the deconstructed, dislocated or fragmented styles of Cubism in her flower paintings. Most of her works in this genre were of single flowers, rarely did she use more than one flower in her art. She enlarged the image of the bloom to fill the frame, crowding out the other parts of the flower and its surrounding environment. For example, her painting of the Black Iris, 1926 is seen at close quarters (Fig.1). As seen in Fig. 1 below, the natural object stood out in the foreground, facing the spectator with a stark, almost frightening nearness. The oil on canvas painting of the Black Iris, 1926 by O’Keeffe is a monumental piece of art, and one of the artist’s masterpieces. She captures the fleeting colours of the springtime flower using a subtle gradation of shades and hues, from “impenetrable black-purple and deep maroon to soft pinks, grays, and whites” (MetMuseum, 2012). Expanding the petals to over-lifesize proportions, O’Keefe compels the viewer to face that which may otherwise be overlooked, thereby raising the level of the ordinary to the extraordinary. When her magnified flowers were first displayed in 1924, even her close friend and mentor Alfred Stieglitz, whom she later married, was taken aback by their bold and larger-than-life presentation. Critics of O’Keefe’s work identified sexual content in the flower’s delicate contours, organic shapes, and smooth surfaces. However, the artist denied using any type of symbolism in her work. Davidson (62) argues that this close-up technique adopted by O’Keeffe reflected the photography style of Stieglitz and others. Further, they also revealed the clarity and intensity of her own personality. Fig.1 Georgia O’Keefe’s Black Iris, 1926 (MetMuseum, 2012) The modernist style of precisionism was usually employed by engineers and planners in designing the built environment. Contrastingly, O’Keeffe’s flower paintings display precisionism in the “crisp, anonymous handling and the closeup of the object” (Davidson 204). Classifying these paintings as Precisionist may stretch the definition a little, but is considered appropriate because “the flower, solitary and powerful, has pushed everything out – a fence, grasses, pebbles, a bit of soil – of its environmental context”. O’Keeffe came to know various flowers at Lake George in upstate New York, where she and Stieglitz began living in a farmhouse on the latter’s family estate, from Spring until late in the Fall. “Because of the deep folds, prominent curves, and fleshlike surfaces of the petals, both in color and texture, the observer regularly finds in O’Keefe’s flower paintings sexual metaphors” (Davidson 205). On the other hand, the artist herself has no patience for such viewpoints where layers of meanings are found in these paintings. She regretted the fact that when people took the time to look at her flower paintings closely as was her wish, they associated their own visualization with the flowers, believing that she also saw flowers in the same way, which she did not. O’Keeffe’s flowers are startling examples of Precisionism; the extreme close-ups in combination with the singleness of the subject is considered to reflect the photography techniques of the 1920s by Stieglitz and others. It is considered possible that the artist may have benefited from the photgraphers’ similar close-up creations of solitary flowers. According to Benke (31), the artist wanted to portray her flowers as a self-contained unit, and to be seen as an entire world by the observer. The largeness and close view of the flowers stun the viewer who is accustomed to seeing small flowers as marginal part of the picture. O’Keefe found that people do not take the time to look at a flower; hence she firmly wanted to paint them big so that they viewers would be surprised into looking at them. She believed that would make even busy New Yorkers take time to see in flowers what the artist herself perceived. Most of the artist’s flower paintings were done as single flower studies. Examples are the Two Calla Lillies on Pink, 1928 (Fig.2) and Jack-in-the-Pulpit I – V, 1930 (Fig.3) displaying a series of stages of a single flower. Fig.2 Georgia O’Keeffe’s Two Calla Lillies on Pink, 1928 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2012) Georgia O’Keeffe’s main experience with flowers was of their colour. The above extremely magnified oil on canvas painting of two calla lillies is a unique example of her flower paintings, using sweeping, broad strokes of subtly combined colours. The white petals have green highlights, and are shown against a pink background, and are deeply etched with the image of two bright yellow pistils. In this floral study also, as in her other works from the 1920s to the 1930s, the artist is believed to have used “strong sexual overtones” (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2012), although this was not her intention. The stages depicted in the Jack-in-the-Pulpit, 1930 paintings did not show the flower’s growth. In these images, the movement of the observer as he progressively comes closer to the flower is captured in the sequence of stages. At each stage, the flower’s central area becomes more enlarged, leading to the flower’s peripheral areas moving out of the viewer’s range of vision (Davidson 205). Fig.3a. Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jack-in-the-Pulpit, 1930, No.II (National Gallery of Art, 2006) Fig.3b. Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jack-in-the-Pulpit, 1930, No.III (National Gallery of Art, 2006) Fig.3c. Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jack-in-the-Pulpit, 1930, No.IV (National Gallery of Art, 2006) Fig.3d. Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jack-in-the-Pulpit, 1930, No.V (National Gallery of Art, 2006) Fig.3e. Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jack-in-the-Pulpit, 1930, No.VI (National Gallery of Art, 2006) Davidson (205) states that here is a slow reduction in the view of the complete flower, with the first stage featuring a giant flower, and the last and fifth stage showing a closer magnification until only the Jack from the flower is visible to the observer and the main identity of the flower is lost (Figs.3a to 3e). According to the National Gallery of Art (3), in Figs.3a, 3b, 3c, 3d, and 3e above, the artist concentrates on a single Jack-in-the-Pulpit flower, and invites the viewer to think about the intricate structure of the blossom. Some of the paintings show only the flower which covers the entire surface of the canvas as in Nos. V and VI, while the previous stages painted of the flower reveal curling leaves and sky. “Each painting in the series brings us closer inside the center of the flower; with no.VI we see only the jack/ spadix” (National Gallery of Art 3). O’Keeffe keeps our attention focused on the flower, by continuously magnifying its form, thereby simplifying and reducing the area that is viewed. The artist believes that only by removal of some areas and by emphasis on key areas, is it possible to understand the real meaning of any object or concept. Critical Reception for O’Keeffe’s Flower Paintings in the Early 1920s Georgia O’Keeffe defended her flower paintings as devoid of sexual meanings, and that they only portrayed how she perceived the flowers. This is found in her words explaining her perceptions regarding her country, and all the natural beauty within it, with her own eyes. Thus, Slatkin (1993, 231) quotes O’Keeffe, 1945 as follows: I think that what I have done is something rather unique in my time and that I am one of the few who gives our country any voice of its own – I claim no credit – it is only that I have seen with my own eye and that I couldn’t help seeing with my own eye. Similarly, Slatkin (1993, 226) states that Georgia O’Keeffe was an experimental artist, whose paintings were based on vision. She believed that it was easier for her to paint her visualized image, rather than write a description about it. She also preferred that people should look at the image, rather than read an account about it. O’Keefe’s words on the importance of color to her work stresses the vital place it held for her expression of art. According to O’Keeffe, Color is one of the great things in the world that makes life worth living to me and as I have come to think of painting, it is my effort to create an equivalent with paint color for the world – life as I see it. The artist also states that she saw no reason for painting anything that could be put into some other form as well. Thus, it is evident that her purpose of painting flowers was to produce richly colored art works, which she depicted in the same way she saw them. Slatkin (2001 254) highlights the diverse achievements of the artist in the twentieth century. Her portrayal of nature in its various forms have been a joyful proclamation of her love for her country, and all the things in her natural environment that she saw. “Perhaps O’Keeffe was unaware of her paintings’ association with sex, but most others find the connection difficult to miss” argues Claxton (319). In the 1920s, the erotic appearance of O’Keeffe’s works shocked an audience that was used to viewing female nudes painted by male painters, but were unaccustomed to exposed natural objects. Significantly, despite Georgia O’Keeffe’s best efforts to defend her work as innocent of portraying sexuality, her paintings of flowers reminded people of eroticism, similar to her earlier abstractions. Besides the paintings of the two Calla Lillies on Pink, 1928, Black Iris, 1928, and particularly the Jack-in-the-Pulpit series, 1930, the painting titled Bleeding Heart, 1932 also contain distinct sexual imagery. While some paintings depict female, and others male parts, one painting Abstraction – White Rose III, 1927, also includes additional erotic imagery. Thus, Claxton (319) argues that O’Keeffe portrays in her flower paintings, the wide range of human sexuality. O’Keeffe’s flowers can also be closely related to an earlier artistic tradition linking flowers with sex. According to recent feminist critics, nineteenth century women writers’ works are believed to contain a vocabulary of eroticism associated with natural objects, particularly flowers. “Seen in this context, Georgia O’Keefe’s visual texts, her flower paintings, suggest a multitude of meanings, with layers of discourse surrounging her images” (Claxton 319). Bennett (253) suggests that O’Keefe was working in a well-established literary tradition. The coding of sexual language was prevalent in the nineteenth century, hence artists and writers in the first half of the twentieth century, “whose artistic models were from the previous century, would likely be very knowledgeable about this coding of sex” (Claxton 319). Conclusion This paper has highlighted the flower paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, and discussed her work in terms of the critical reception given to her paintings in the early 1920s. The research evidence shows that the artist consistently defended her work as completely lacking in sexual content. She argued that she portrayed flowers exactly as she saw them. She also believed in creating large scale flower images, only for the purpose of ensuring that people would stop and look at the flowers. On the other hand, viewing the flower paintings, it is clear that most have an erotic appearance, produced by the particular use of colors and shading, and the emphasis given to the central area of the flowers, along with the other parts of the flower such as its pistils and stamen, and the textures used for the petals. Thus, the artist’s visual texts consisting of her flower paintings suggest several meanings, and give rise to many layers of discourse. It is concluded that taking into consideration the artist’s own viewpoints on her flower paintings, it is evident that although sexual in content, the visual images also emphasize the exotic and the colorful, besides magnifying the textures and beauty of the flowers. -------------------------------------------------- Works Cited Benke, Britta. Georgia O’Keeffe, 1887-1986: Flowers in the desert. Germany: Taschen, 2000. Bennett, Paula. ‘Critical clitoridectomy: Female sexual imagery and feminist psycho- analytic theory. Signs, 18.2 (1993): 253-259. Claxton, M. Miller. ‘Untamable texts: The art of Georgia O’Keeffe and Eudory Welty’. The Missippi Quarterly, 56.2 (2003): 315-330. Davidson, Abraham A. Early American modernist painting, 1910-1935. New York: Harper and Row, 1981. Goodrich, Lloyd and Doris Bry. Georgia O’Keeffe, New York: Whitney Museum of American art, 1970. Harvey, Eleanor Jones. Bright, bold, and beautiful: The art of Georgia O’Keefe. USA Today, 128.2656 (2000): 36. MetMuseum. Black Iris, 1926. Georgia O’Keefe (American, 1887-1986). Heilbrunn Time Line of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2012. 24 May 2012 National Gallery of Art. Jack-in-the-Pulpit, II – VI. American artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), National Gallery of Art, Washington, Spring 2006. 24 May 2012 OKeeffe, Georgia. Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: Viking Press, 1976. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Two calla lillies on pink, 1928. Modern and Contemporary Art. Georgia O’Keeffe, American, 1887-1986. 2012. 24 May 2012 Slatkin, Wendy. The voices of women artists. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1993. Slatkin, Wendy. Women artists in history: From antiquity to the present. Edition 4. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001. Willard, Charlotte. ‘Georgia O’Keeffe’. Art in America, October 1963. Works Cited for Illustrations MetMuseum. Black Iris, 1926. Georgia O’Keefe (American, 1887-1986). Heilbrunn Time Line of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2012. 24 May 2012 National Gallery of Art. Jack-in-the-Pulpit, II – VI. American artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), National Gallery of Art, Washington, Spring 2006. 24 May 2012 Philadelphia Museum of Art. Two calla lillies on pink, 1928. Modern and Contemporary Art. Georgia O’Keeffe, American, 1887-1986. 2012. 24 May 2012 Read More