Georgia O Keeffe

Transcription

1 Georgia O Keeffe We have already encountered Georgia O Keeffe (yes, three e s and two f s) as Stieglitz s favorite figural model, favorite artistic personality and favorite person. She is also many people s favorite artist, which has both advantages and disadvantages. The key advantage is the fact that she is worthy of that status, having earned it carefully and thoughtfully.

2 Georgia O Keeffe O Keeffe declared to her family that she intended to become and artist at the age of 12, in She had minimal art training before 1905, but she herself figured out how to do quite a lot. Below left are two drawings she kept throughout her life, from , when she was 14 or 15. Below right are two early experiments with color and the watercolor medium. These are both earlier than her first really serious training, done

3 O Keeffe had some reasonable, if highly conventional, training at the Art School of the Chicago Art Institute, These are all training pieces that she did there, again retained by her throughout her life. Looking back, water color was a good medium for her early training, emphasizing nuanced color balance and a need to block out, systematically, the design areas that you intend. She doesn t know that yet, however.

4 After brief study of slight consequence in New York, the first really major step in O Keeffe s career as a modern artist occurred in 1912, when she studied at the University of Virginia under Alon Bement. A follower of Arthur Wesley Dow, Bement was interested in Asian design philosophy and the notion of music as a paradigm for pure art. O Keeffe learned and embraced the idea that an artist exists to design harmonies of form, line and color. Here are a few of O Keeffe s affectedly designed images of UVA, all c Ducks, because everyone loves ducks.

5 Late in 1914, however, things started to get very interesting for Georgia O Keeffe. She s 27 years old, but now with a sense of mission as far as making something aesthetically deep and significant about her art is concerned. She returned to New York and spent half a year at Columbia University studying with Arthur Wesley Dow himself and really started to embrace the abstracting influence of his philosophy. That gave her tools and a will to develop them herself. Also in the years , although she was still teaching in Texas for most of the year, she came back to New York regularly, mostly to stay in touch with the modern art world. The difference is that in those years, after the Armory Show, she knew all about Stieglitz and 291, so she went there commonly, both to get a good dose of his own artistic teaching and, especially, to see the displays of European modern art that were now reasonably frequent at 291. Both the art and Stieglitz s explications of it were valuable. Her own work evolved very rapidly. Here are two rather conservative experiments (1915-6).

6 Some fascinating work from : This is obviously experimental, some cubist, some sort of naturalist, some based on forms only from her imagination, and some inexplicable. The water colors are interpretations of people she knew, sort of like portraits, expressed in color and form. At the lower right is Paul Strand the photographer who would be her lifelong friend and artistic companion in the southwest. Note how even the purely abstract imagery commonly has a palpable form, like organic forms or architecture

7 Like Dove and Weber before her, O Keeffe quickly made an impression on Stieglitz and he started promoting her work. She started showing in 1916, with her first solo show in Stieglitz, of course, continues to be The Great Enabler. In the wake of the Armory Show, he is why a lot of people actually saw O Keeffe s work.

8 They were kindred spirits, both contributing a lot to what the other developed. Given their disparate media, this makes a lot of sense: the experiments of one often discovered different kinds of things from the experiments of the other. Above left: G.O. working with her water colors. Above center and below left: G.O. being subject matter. Above right: G.O. in New Mexico, where she summered from 1929 on. Here she is writing her daily letter to Stieglitz.

9 O Keeffe wasn t just seeing these modernist photos, but also was hanging out with the photographers and learning from their goals and motivations. Steichen, Flatiron Building, New York 1904 Stieglitz, City of Ambition, New York 1910

10 Some of the key ideas one learns rubbing shoulders with Stieglitz and his kind. Stieglitz, Dancing Trees 1921 Weston, Pepper 1930

11 Usually, when Stieglitz went to Lake George, Georgia O Keeffe went with him. They were married in Stieglitz Lake George 1934 Stieglitz, Grape Leaves and House, Lake George 1934

12 These Lake George photos by Stieglitz are just as informative for O Keeffe as they are for Stieglitz. When he was making these photos, she was there, discussing, critiquing and learning. When we see O Keeffe s mature preferences in subject matter, these are essentially what we will see.

13 Stieglitz took a lot of photos of O Keeffe in or by a car, which was a familiar association because she traveled all over America, plus (later) Canada, South America, Hawaii (before it was a state) and even Asia, looking for ideas. We ll cover her work in the American southwest in some detail. She loved it there, spending long summer vacations from 1929 to She bought a house in New Mexico in 1945 and moved to it permanently in 1949, after Stieglitz died in Below: O Keeffe, My Front Yard, Summer 1941

14 PIW in Greece participating in our beloved Most Excellent Rock Contest.

15 Key Concepts: 1. O Keeffe s style is virtually never painterly, although there can be rich visual texture. That can come from water color medium or, in oil, it is actually painted. 2. All works are always very carefully composed. That is her goal when she sets out on a project. Usually forms are hard-edged, to emphasize compositional choices. 3. Curvilinear, organic shapes are normal: anything else requires explanation. This isn t a philosophy, but rather a personal taste. It s the branch of pure Aesthetics meaningful to her. A key exception is New York City, a complex topic 4. Works are usually based on some sort of subject matter, usually things that she likes, again because that s what she wants her art to be. Abstract II is possible, especially very late in her career. For the most part, though, it is a matter of Abstract I. There are also biomorphic or rectilinear forms that are obvious to the eye but without clearly being recognizable subjects. There s always a sense of something or other, in space. 5. Sequential series are crucial to her, with each new iteration refining the previous. Commonly it s one title with numbers for the individual pieces. There are various ways this can be done. Doing sequences refined and deepened her relationship with the object, but more important they refine the design based on the expression of it. 6. Ultimately the artwork isn t about the subject, but about art: it isn t so much "the thing, but more an O'Keeffe. 7. She intends a complex 4-way relationship between the object, the artist, the painting and the viewer. It is very much Content : she expects you to engage.

16 Phase 1) : Very Abstracted landforms. The water color medium makes these nearly painterly too. She was still teaching in Texas when these were done, but brought them to New York to display with Stieglitz in The most famous of these were in her first solo show at 291 in 1917 Studies for O Keeffe, Painting #21: Palo Duro Canyon 1916

17 Cartouche: O Keeffe, Painting #21: Palo Duro Canyon (1916)

18 Blue 1, 1915 Note: This notion of a series, where each one is a refinement of her own thinking about the previous one, quickly became normal for her, sometimes quite specific (same specific subject done over and over) and sometimes more broadly thematic (various views of the same landform, various arrangement of dried bones and /or teeth and / or flowers). Blue 2-4,

19 O'Keeffe, Light Coming on the plains II 1917 No. 1 No. 3

20 I don t have a picture of Number I, but there are Numbers II, IV, V, VI and VII in order. O'Keeffe, Evening Star III 1917

21 Cloth Drawing 1915 O'Keeffe, From the Plains I 1919 O'Keeffe, Orange and Red Streak 1919

22 1920s: O Keeffe was mostly in New York city or at Lake George. It is initially experimental, but as the 1920s progress she works out nearly all of her preferred subject matter types (all but the Southwestern themes), including geometric designs based on architecture, flowers, Microscopics (an off-shoot of the flowers theme), landscapes (especially trees) and still lives. The concept of developing her design sense by working a topic over and over in a series becomes definitive. This is crucial, because the artist we now know of as Georgia O Keeffe had been fully defined in her own mind when she started going to New Mexico in Stieglitz, Equivalent 1931 / O'Keeffe, East River from the Shelton

23 Steiglitz, The City of Ambition 1910 Sloan, The City from Greenwich Village 1922

24 O Keeffe New York City Night 1929 Stieglitz Night View of New York from the Back Window of

25 Other O Keeffe examples: Radiator Building and City Night, both 1920s This was a favorite theme for her, returned to repeatedly throughout most of the 1930s.

26 O'Keeffe The Shelton with Sunspots 1926 O'Keeffe, Manhattan (1932 Manhattan in situ in the National Museum of American Art, Washington DC

27 Abstractions of numerous sorts remain a constant motif for her, these three extremely disparate examples being from the teens and 1920s. Do note that they usually have a sense of form and/or space, something with fair biomorphic forms recognizable, and often with some degree of (usually female) sensuality detectable if you look for it.

28 These are from the 1930s through the 1970s. There were drawings too.

29 O'Keeffe Blue and Green Music 1921

30 This is O Keeffe s most major type of subject matter, with elements of still life, microscopics, abstraction and simple fascination, all designed and developed in series. These are 1920s through 1950s, but she did them for 20 more years too.

31 More, just cuz. She also did lots of drawings and studies for these. 1920s through 1950s again.

32 Black Iris # Black Iris # O'Keeffe Pink Tulip 1926 O'Keeffe Black Iris 1926

33 O'Keeffe Jack-in-the-Pulpit IV 1930 V and VI, both 1930s

34 O'Keeffe Cup of Silver 1939 Note: abstraction does not increase over time: she uses that tool if and when she pleases. Orchid, below, is from the 1940s.

35 These are worth a quick look. They are all Lake George scenes, in which you can see factors experimented with by Stieglitz and other photographers, or by O Keeffe in Texas or New York. We ll see similar experimentation in her south western scenes. 1920s and 1930s.

36 O'Keeffe White Birch 1925 Individual trees were a beloved topic for her, following Stieglitz s Dancing Trees of 1921 and some similar treatments by the Microscopic photographers. These had the same variety of abstraction, close focus and series study as the flowers and objects.

37 And then she hit the road. Her focus on the American Southwest is most famous, but she went all over the place, looking for visual experiences she could exploit. Canada above, Colorado below left, looking down from an airplane on the way to Hawaii or Peru or Asia above right and Peru itself below right. 1920s through the 1960s in these cases.

38 The American Southwest pleased her no end, a landscape and lifestyle that endlessly provided interesting shapes, astonishing colors, simply designed architecture and lovely flowers.

39 O'Keeffe Cliffs Beyond Abiquiu: Dry Waterfall 1945 Edward Weston Dunes 1936

40 O'Keeffe, Ranchos Church 1930s (1930)

41 Photo of Strand by Stieglitz Paul Strand, Church: Rancho de Taos 1931 O'Keeffe, Ranchos Church 1930 Photo by Strand of O Keeffe holding the Perfect Rock she stole from him.

42 O Keeffe, In the Patio I 1946 Her favorite: the patio in her beloved house in New Mexico, 1945 ff.

43 O Keeffe, Stump in Red Hills 1940 Trees, dead or alive, in bloom or not, with or without leaves, in a landscape setting or not

44 Found objects, dead things, broken pots, flowers, Perfect Rocks and anything else that caught her eye, either as she found it or arranged into a design,

45 O'Keeffe, Cow's Skull w/calico Roses 1932 O'Keeffe, Red & Pink Rocks and Teeth 1938

46 O'Keeffe, Pelvis Series: Red with Yellow 1945 O'Keeffe, Pelvis III 1944 Herself, with the painting.

47 O Keeffe: Abstraction 1943 O Keeffe: Landscape 1960s

48 Various permutations on Black Rock, through the 1970s, some 2D, some 3D.

49 Viewed from a mesa or an airplane, rivers, valleys and roads gave O Keeffe lots of opportunities for clever design, semi-recognizable space and form, and abstraction.

50 O Keeffe, It was Blue & Green 1960 O'Keeffe Blue Wave and Three Red Circles 1970s

51 O'Keeffe Green Yellow and Orange 1960

52 Just for Wow Number I: O Keeffe, Sky Above the Clouds, 1960, in the Chicago Art Institute Staircase.

53 Just for Wow Number II: NFG: O'Keeffe, Series II, From the Plains I and II, both 1954 Series I From the Plains 1919 With a Docent at the Whitney Orange and Red Streak 1919