nd sexuality

White Trumpet
Flower by Georgia O’Keefe (1932)
In my third look at the life and works of the American artist, Georgia O’Keefe, I want to
concentrate on the art she is probably most remembered for, her flower paintings. The
depiction of flowers in works of art has always been a popular genre. In past blogs I
looked at two famous female artists, Rachel Ruysch (My Daily Art Display October 3rd
2011) and Judith Leyster (My Daily Art Display December 3rd 2013), who were amongst
the greatest floral painters of their time. Also from the Netherlands there were the father
and son floral painters, Jan van Os and Georgius van Os. At some time, many of the
great names in art completed floral works, such as Manet’s lilacs, Monet’s lilies,
Hokusai’s cherry blossom, Dürer’s tuft of cowslips, van Gogh’s sunflowers, Fantin-
Latour’s roses and so on. So what is so special about O’Keefe’s floral depictions? The
answer is that Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings featured close ups of parts of a flower rather
than the whole flower and they are stand-alone depictions and not part of a still-life
work. She seemed to integrate photographic methodologies such as cropping and close-
ups into her floral works. She believed by enlarging the flower the true beauty of the
specimen would be hard to ignore. Of her technique she once said:

“…A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower… still, in
a way, nobody really sees a flower, really, it is so small….So I said to myself, I’ll paint
what I see, but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it,
even busy New Yorkers [will] take time to see what I see of flowers. When you
[referring to critics and others who wrote about these paintings] took time to really
notice my flower you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower as if I think
and see what you think and see of the flower, and I don’t…”

So where did all her ideas for depicting flowers in such a manner start? It could be that
she remembered her art teacher she had at her convent school in Madison, back in 1901,
when she was fourteen years old. The teacher brought in a wild flower, a jack-in-the-
pulpit plant, and asked her teenage students to study it from all angles and told them of
the importance of this close scrutiny. O’Keefe was fascinated and drew it from all
different angles and then concentrated on drawing just parts of the flower rather than
the whole specimen.  This was the beginning of her journey into floral painting.

Jack in the Pulpit IV by Georgia O’Keefe

(1930)
Almost thirty years after this classroom incident, in 1930, Georgia actually completed a
series of six painting entitled Jack-in-the Pulpit, five of which can now be found in the
National Gallery of Art in Washington. The first in the series began with the striped and
hooded bloom and was a carefully detailed botanical depiction of the flower but as the
series continued the depiction of the flower moved further away from a realistic
depiction of it and became almost mass of colour.
 Jack in the Pulpit No.1 by Georgia
O’Keefe (1930)
As the series developed, the depictions became less detailed and more of an abstract
rendering of the flower with the haloed pistil depicted against a sombre black, purple
and gray background. The works shown above show the transition in the way she
depicted the flower.   In fourth of the series one can see that it has less botanical detail
than the first three works and is tending towards abstraction. O’Keefe explained the
transition writing:

“…“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say in any other
way – things that I had no words for…”
 R
ed Canna by Georgia O’Keefe (1924)
It was around the early 1920’s during her summer visits to Lake George with Alfred
Stieglitz that she started painting flowers in her own imitable style. She would
concentrate on the head of the flower and “zoom in” on its centre and then enlarged it,
so it completely filled the canvas, often cropping the depiction. She painted all types of
flowers from the exotic black irises and red Canna lilies to the more mundane such as
poppies, daffodils and roses.

The painting Red Canna Lilies, which she completed in 1924 and is now housed in the
University of Arizona Museum of Art, has such great magnification it almost appears to
be an abstract work of art with just a series of overlapping lines and a myriad of tones.

Petunia No.2 by Georgia O’Keefe (1925)

It was in 1924 that O’Keeffe began to make paintings in various sizes. The one thing they
had in common was that all of them tended to focus on the centres of flowers. Petunia
No. 2, which she completed that year, was one of her first large-scale flower paintings
and she had it accepted into an exhibition organised by Alfred Stieglitz at the Anderson
Galleries on Park Avenue, New York. The gallery was owned by the American publisher,
Mitchell Kennerley and Stieglitz, who had not had his own exhibition space since 1917,
borrowed rooms from Kennerley’s gallery and later in 1925 permanently rented a small
room at the gallery which he called the Intimate Gallery. Stieglitz idea for the Intimate
Gallery was that it should be a place for local artists to exhibit their work and by so
doing create a sense of an artistic community, almost an artist’s cooperative. It was to be
a less formal exhibiting place where patron and artists could mix and build up a good
working and very personal relationship.

Stieglitz had gathered together a collection of works for his December 1925 exhibition,
both artistic and photographic. He had called upon his friends to join him in supplying
works for the exhibition. Including himself, there were seven contributors in all. They
were John Marin, Marsden Hartley, and Arthur Dove, the modernist painters, the
watercolourist Charles Demuth as well as his fellow photographer Paul Strand, and of
course, not forgetting his wife, Georgia O’Keefe. The exhibition, at the time, was one of
the largest exhibitions of American art ever organised and was entitled Alfred Stieglitz
Presents Seven Americans: 159 Paintings, Photographs, and Things, Recent and Never
Before Publicly Shown by Arthur G. Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Charles
Demuth, Paul Strand, Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. The exhibition lasted for
three weeks and had numerous visitors but few of the painting sold.
 Two
Calla Lily on Pink by Georgia O’Keefe (1928)
In the mid 1800’s an herbaceous perennial plant, native to southern Africa was
introduced into America. It was the Calla Lily. It had such an exotic looking flower that
it soon became a favourite subject of floral painters and photographers. Over time
Georgia O’Keefe completed numerous renditions of the flower, so much so, the lily
became her insignia in the eyes of the public, and the Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias
took up that theme in his caricature of O’Keeffe as “Our Lady of the Lily“, which
appeared in the New Yorker in 1929. Two Calla Lilies on Pink was one of her painting
depicting this exotic flower. She completed it in 1928 and is an amazing piece of floral
art full of subtle merging of colours and tones. The flower petals lie against a pink
background which enhances the beauty of the work. Look how O’Keefe has managed to
merge a green colour in the white of the petals and by doing so cleverly highlighting
them. Again these white and green tinged petals of the two flowers seem to be pierced by
the emergence of two bright yellow pistils as they rise upwards. It was this kind of
depiction with its sexual connotation that was to lead to controversy. How could floral
paintings cause such controversy?

Grey Lines with Black, Blue and Yellow by Georgia

O’Keefe (1923)
Another example of her work which some people believed lent credence to the sexual
nuance of her paintings was one entitled Grey Lines with Black, Blue and Yellow which
she completed around 1923 and is part of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston
collection. It is looked upon as one of her best works. Is it a floral painting? Is it a close
up of the inner part of a flower? It is this ambiguity which is fascinating and has led
some critics to argue that it is an abstract work and that the undulating folds are based
upon female genitalia. Georgia O’Keefe was adamant that none of her floral works of art
had anything to do with male or female genitalia and grew weary of those people who
maintained the sexual link even after she had denied such a connotation. In Ernest
Watson’s biography of Georgia, Georgia O’Keefe, American Artist, he tells how, in 1943,
she dismisses the sexual association with her floral paintings even if it mean people paid
closer attention to the works of art. She is quoted as saying:

“…Well – I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really
notice my flowers you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and
you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower –
and I don’t…”