Georgia Totto O'Keeffe (November 15, 1887 March 6, 1986) was an American
modernist
Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
painter and
draftswoman whose career spanned seven decades and whose work remained largely independent of major
art movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific art philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined ...
s. Called the "Mother of American modernism", O'Keeffe gained international recognition for her paintings of natural forms, particularly flowers and desert-inspired landscapes, which were often drawn from and related to places and environments in which she lived.
From 1905, when O'Keeffe began her studies at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a Private university, private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which gr ...
, until about 1920, she studied art or earned money as a commercial illustrator or a teacher to pay for further education.
Influenced by
Arthur Wesley Dow
Arthur Wesley Dow (April 6, 1857 – December 13, 1922) was an American painter, printmaker, photographer and an arts educator.
Early life
Arthur Wesley Dow was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1857. Dow received his first art training in 188 ...
, O'Keeffe began to develop her unique style beginning with her watercolors from her studies at the
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...
and more dramatically in the charcoal drawings that she produced in 1915 that led to total abstraction.
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz (; January 1, 1864 – July 13, 1946) was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was k ...
, an art dealer and photographer, held an exhibit of her works in 1917. Over the next couple of years, she taught and continued her studies at the
Teachers College, Columbia University
Teachers College, Columbia University (TC) is the graduate school of education affiliated with Columbia University, a private research university in New York City. Founded in 1887, Teachers College has been a part of Columbia University since ...
.
She moved to
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
in 1918 at Stieglitz's request and began working seriously as an artist. They developed a professional and personal relationship that led to their marriage on December 11, 1924.
O'Keeffe created many forms of abstract art, including close-ups of flowers, such as the ''
Red Canna'' paintings, that many found to represent vulvas, though O'Keeffe consistently denied that intention.
The imputation of the depiction of women's sexuality was also fueled by explicit and sensuous photographs of O'Keeffe that Stieglitz had taken and exhibited.
O'Keeffe and Stieglitz lived together in New York until 1929, when O'Keeffe began spending part of the year in the Southwest, which served as inspiration for her paintings of New Mexico landscapes and images of animal skulls, such as ''
Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue'' (1931) and
''Summer Days'' (1936)''.'' After Stieglitz's death in 1946, she lived in New Mexico for the next 40 years at
her home and studio or
Ghost Ranch
Ghost Ranch is a retreat and education center in Rio Arriba County in north central New Mexico, United States. It is about 65 miles northwest of Santa Fe and 14 miles from Abiquiu, the nearest community. In the later 20th century, it was the ...
summer home in
Abiquiú, and in the last years of her life, in
Santa Fe. In 2014, O'Keeffe's 1932 painting ''
Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1'' sold for $44,405,000—at the time, by far the largest price paid for any painting by a female artist. Her works are in the collections of several museums, and following her death, the
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum was established in Santa Fe.
Early life and education (1887–1916)
Georgia O'Keeffe was born on November 15, 1887,
in a farmhouse in the town of
Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
Sun Prairie is a city in Dane County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 35,967 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is the most populous suburb of Madison, Wisconsin, Madison and is part of the Madison metropolitan area. ...
. Her parents, Francis Calyxtus O'Keeffe and Ida (Totto) O'Keeffe, were dairy farmers. Her father was of Irish descent. Her mother's father, George Victor Totto, for whom O'Keeffe was named, was a Hungarian
count
Count (feminine: countess) is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility. Pine, L. G. ''Titles: How the King Became His Majesty''. New York: ...
who came to the United States in 1848.
O'Keeffe was the second of seven children.
She attended Town Hall School in Sun Prairie.
By age 10, she had decided to become an artist.
With her sisters,
Ida and Anita, she received art instruction from local watercolorist Sara Mann. O'Keeffe attended high school at
Sacred Heart Academy in Madison, Wisconsin, as a boarder between 1901 and 1902. In late 1902, the O'Keeffes moved from Wisconsin to the close-knit neighborhood of
Peacock Hill in
Williamsburg, Virginia
Williamsburg is an Independent city (United States), independent city in Virginia, United States. It had a population of 15,425 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located on the Virginia Peninsula, Williamsburg is in the northern par ...
, where O'Keeffe's father started a business making
rusticated cast concrete block in anticipation of a demand for the block in the
Virginia Peninsula building trade, but the demand never materialized. O'Keeffe stayed in Wisconsin attending
Madison Central High School until joining her family in Virginia in 1903. She completed high school as a boarder at Chatham Episcopal Institute in Virginia (now
Chatham Hall), graduating in 1905. At Chatham, she was a member of
Kappa Delta
Kappa Delta (, also known as KD or Kaydee) is an American collegiate social sorority. Established in 1897, it was the first sorority founded at the State Female Normal School (now Longwood University), in Farmville, Virginia. Kappa Delta is one ...
sorority.
O'Keeffe taught and headed the art department at
West Texas State Normal College, watching over her youngest sibling, Claudia, at her mother's request. In 1917, she visited her brother, Alexis, at a military camp in Texas before he shipped out for Europe during
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
. While there, she created the painting ''
The Flag'',
which expressed her anxiety and depression about the war.
File:Georgia O'Keeffe, Untitled, vase of flowers, 1903 to 1905.tif, ''Untitled (Vase of Flowers)'', 1903–1905, watercolor on paper, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
File: Untitled, dead rabbit with the copper pot by O'Keeffe 1908.jpg, ''Untitled (Dead Rabbit with the Copper Pot)'', 1908, Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists.
Although artists may study f ...
File:Rotunda at the University of Virginia 1914 by Georgia O’Keeffe.jpg, '' Scrapbook (The Rotunda at University of Virginia)'', 1912–1914, watercolor on paper, University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...
Academic training
From 1905 to 1906, O'Keeffe was enrolled at the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is a Private university, private art school associated with the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) in Chicago, Illinois. Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which gr ...
, where she studied with
John Vanderpoel and ranked at the top of her class.
As a result of contracting
typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known simply as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella enterica'' serotype Typhi bacteria, also called ''Salmonella'' Typhi. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often th ...
, she had to take a year off from her education.
In 1907, she attended the
Art Students League
The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists.
Although artists may study f ...
in New York City, where she studied under
William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase (November 1, 1849October 25, 1916) was an American painter, known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later became the Parsons School of Design.
...
,
Kenyon Cox, and
F. Luis Mora.
In 1908, she won the League's William Merritt Chase still-life prize for her oil painting ''
Dead Rabbit with Copper Pot''. Her prize was a scholarship to attend the League's outdoor summer school in
Lake George, New York.
While in New York City, O'Keeffe visited galleries, such as
291
__NOTOC__
Year 291 ( CCXCI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known in Rome as the Year of the Consulship of Tiberianus and Dio (or, less frequently, year 1044 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomin ...
, co-owned by her future husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. The gallery promoted the work of avant-garde artists and photographers from the United States and Europe.
In 1908, O'Keeffe discovered that she would not be able to finance her studies. Her father had gone bankrupt and her mother was seriously ill with
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB), also known colloquially as the "white death", or historically as consumption, is a contagious disease usually caused by ''Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can al ...
.
She was not interested in a career as a painter based on the mimetic tradition that had formed the basis of her art training.
She took a job in
Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
as a commercial artist and worked there until 1910, when she returned to Virginia to recuperate from the
measles
Measles (probably from Middle Dutch or Middle High German ''masel(e)'', meaning "blemish, blood blister") is a highly contagious, Vaccine-preventable diseases, vaccine-preventable infectious disease caused by Measles morbillivirus, measles v ...
and later moved with her family to
Charlottesville, Virginia
Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city (United States), independent city in Virginia, United States. It is the county seat, seat of government of Albemarle County, Virginia, Albemarle County, which surrounds the ...
.
She did not paint for four years and said that the smell of
turpentine
Turpentine (which is also called spirit of turpentine, oil of turpentine, terebenthine, terebenthene, terebinthine and, colloquially, turps) is a fluid obtainable by the distillation of resin harvested from living trees, mainly pines. Principall ...
made her ill.
She began teaching art in 1911. One of her positions was at her former school, Chatham Episcopal Institute, in Virginia.
First abstractions
She took a summer art class in 1912 at the
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson and contains his The Lawn, Academical Village, a World H ...
from
Alon Bement, who was a
Columbia University Teachers College faculty member. Under Bement, she learned of the innovative ideas of
Arthur Wesley Dow
Arthur Wesley Dow (April 6, 1857 – December 13, 1922) was an American painter, printmaker, photographer and an arts educator.
Early life
Arthur Wesley Dow was born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, in 1857. Dow received his first art training in 188 ...
, Bement's colleague. Dow's approach was influenced by principles of design and composition in Japanese art. She began to experiment with abstract compositions and develop a personal style that veered away from realism.
From 1912 to 1914, she taught art in the public schools in
Amarillo in the
Texas Panhandle, and was a teaching assistant to Bement during the summers.
She took classes at the University of Virginia for two more summers.
She also took a class in the spring of 1914 at Teachers College of Columbia University with Dow, who further influenced her thinking about the process of making art. Her studies at the University of Virginia, based upon Dow's principles, were pivotal in O'Keeffe's development as an artist. Through her exploration and growth as an artist, she helped to establish the
American modernism movement.
File:Drawing No. 2 by Georgia O'Keeffe 1915 NGA.tif, '' Special Drawing No. 2'', 1915, charcoal on laid paper, National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...
File:Georgia O'Keefe, No. 8 Special, 1916.jpg, ''Special No. 8'', 1916, charcoal on paper, Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...
File:Georgia O'Keeffe, Sunrise, watercolor, 1916.tif, ''Sunrise'', 1916, watercolor on paper
She taught at
Columbia College in
Columbia, South Carolina
Columbia is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of South Carolina. With a population of 136,632 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is List of municipalities in South Carolina, the second-mo ...
in late 1915, where she completed a series of highly innovative
charcoal abstractions based on her personal sensations.
In early 1916, O'Keeffe was in New York at Teachers College, Columbia University. She mailed the charcoal drawings to a friend and former classmate at Teachers College, Anita Pollitzer, who took them to Alfred Stieglitz at his 291 gallery early in 1916.
Stieglitz found them to be the "purest, finest, sincerest things that had entered 291 in a long while" and said that he would like to show them. In April that year, Stieglitz exhibited ten of her drawings at 291.
After further course work at Columbia in early 1916 and summer teaching for Bement,
she became the chair of the art department at
West Texas State Normal College, in
Canyon, Texas
Canyon is a city in and the county seat of Randall County, Texas, United States. The population was 14,836 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. It is part of the Amarillo, Texas, Amarillo metropolitan area, metropolitan statistical area ...
, beginning in the fall of 1916.
O'Keeffe, who enjoyed sunrises and sunsets, developed a fondness for intense and nocturnal colors. Building upon a practice she began in South Carolina, O'Keeffe painted to express her most private sensations and feelings. Rather than sketching out a design before painting, she freely created designs. O'Keeffe continued to experiment until she believed she truly captured her feelings in the watercolor, ''
Light Coming on the Plains No. I'' (1917).
File:Georgia O'Keeffe, Light Coming on the Plains No. II, 1917, CMAA.tif, ''Light Coming on the Plains No. II'', 1917, watercolor on newsprint paper, Amon Carter Museum of American Art
File:Georgia O'Keeffe, Series 1, No. 8.jpg, ''Series 1, No. 8'', 1918, oil painting on canvas, Lenbachhaus
The Lenbachhaus () is a building housing the Städtische Galerie (English: Municipal Gallery) art museum in Munich's ''Kunstareal''.
The building
The Lenbachhaus was built as a Florentine-style villa for the painter Franz von Lenbach between ...
, Munich
File:Blue-green.jpg, '' Blue and Green Music'', 1921, oil on canvas, Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...
She began a series of watercolor paintings based upon the scenery and expansive views during her walks,
including
vibrant paintings of
Palo Duro Canyon
Palo Duro Canyon is a canyon system of the Caprock Escarpment located in the Texas Panhandle near the cities of Amarillo and Canyon. The second largest canyon system in the United States, it is roughly long and has an average width of , but ...
.
She "captured a monumental landscape in this simple configuration, fusing blue and green pigments in almost indistinct tonal gradations that simulate the pulsating effect of light on the horizon of the Texas Panhandle," according to author Sharyn Rohlfsen Udall.
File:Georgia O'Keeffe, Canyon with Crows.tif, ''Canyon with Crows'', 1917, watercolor and graphite on paper, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
File:Georgia O'Keeffe, No. 20 Special, Milwaukee Art Museum.tif, ''No. 20 Special'', oil on board, 1916–1917, Milwaukee Art Museum
File:Georgia O'Keeffe, Palo Duro Canyon, 1916-1917.tif, ''Palo Duro Canyon'', 1916–1917, watercolor, West Texas A&M University
New York (1918–1930s)
Stieglitz circle
In 1918, O'Keeffe moved to New York as Stieglitz offered to provide financial support,
a residence, and place for her to paint. They developed a close personal relationship, and later married, while he promoted her work.
Stieglitz also discouraged her use of watercolor, which was associated with amateur women artists.
According to art historian Charles Eldredge, "the couple enjoyed a prominent position in the ebullient art of New York throughout the 1920s".
O'Keeffe came to know the many early American modernists who were part of Stieglitz's circle of artists, including painters
Charles Demuth
Charles Henry Buckius Demuth (November 8, 1883 – October 23, 1935) was an American painter who specialized in watercolors and turned to oils late in his career, developing a style of painting known as Precisionism.
"Search the history of Amer ...
,
Arthur Dove,
Marsden Hartley
Marsden Hartley (January 4, 1877 – September 2, 1943) was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist. Hartley developed his painting abilities by observing Cubist artists in Paris and Berlin.
Early life and education
Hartley was bor ...
,
John Marin
John Marin (December 23, 1870 – October 2, 1953) was an early American modernist visual artist. He is known for his abstract landscape paintings and watercolors.
Early life and education
Marin was born on December 23, 1870, in Rutherford, N ...
, and photographers
Paul Strand and
Edward Steichen
Edward Jean Steichen (; March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter and curator and a pioneer of fashion photography. His gown images for the magazine ''Art et Décoration'' in 1911 were the first modern ...
. Strand's photography, as well as that of Stieglitz, inspired O'Keeffe's work. Stieglitz, whose 291 Gallery closed down in 1917, was now able to spend more time on his own photographic practice, producing a series of photographs of natural forms, cloud studies (a series known as ''
Equivalents''), and portraits of O'Keeffe.
Prior to her marriage to Stieglitz, O'Keeffe's drawings and paintings were frequently abstract, although she began to expand her visual vocabulary from 1924 onward to include more representational imagery "usually taken from nature and often painted in series".
Flower paintings
O'Keeffe began creating simplified images of natural things, such as leaves, flowers, and rocks.
Inspired by
Precisionism
Precisionism was a modernist art movement that emerged in the United States after World War I. Influenced by Cubism, Purism, and Futurism, Precisionist artists reduced subjects to their essential geometric shapes, eliminated detail, and often u ...
, ''The Green Apple'', completed in 1922, depicts her notion of simple, meaningful life.
O'Keeffe said that year, "it is only by selection, by elimination, and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things."
''
Blue and Green Music'' expresses O'Keeffe's feelings about music through visual art, using bold and subtle colors.
Also in 1922, journalist
Paul Rosenfeld commented "
heEssence of very womanhood permeates her pictures", citing her use of color and shapes as metaphors for the female body.
This same article also describes her paintings in a sexual manner.
O'Keeffe, most famous for her depiction of flowers, made about 200
flower paintings,
which by the mid-1920s were large-scale depictions of flowers, as if seen through a magnifying lens, such as ''
Oriental Poppies''
and several ''
Red Canna'' paintings. She painted her first large-scale flower painting, ''Petunia, No. 2'', in 1924 and it was first exhibited in 1925.
Making magnified depictions of objects created a sense of awe and emotional intensity.
In 1924, Stieglitz arranged a show displaying O'Keeffe's works of art alongside his photographs at
Anderson Galleries and helped to organize other exhibitions over the next several years.
File:Georgia O'Keeffe Red Canna 1915 Yale University Art Gallery.tif, ''Red Canna'', 1915, Yale University Art Gallery
The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is an art museum in New Haven, Connecticut. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University. Although it embraces all cultures and period ...
File:Georgia O'Keeffe Red Canna 1919 HMA.jpg, ''Red Canna'', 1919, oil on board, High Museum of Art
The High Museum of Art (colloquially the High) is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia (on Peachtree Street in Midtown, the city's arts district), the High is 312,000 square feet (28, ...
, Atlanta
File:Red Canna (1923) by Georgia O'Keeffe.png, ''Red Canna'', 1923, oil-painting on canvas, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1805, it is the longest continuously operating art museum and art school in the United States.
The academy's museum ...
New York Skyscraper paintings
After having moved into a 30th floor apartment in the
Shelton Hotel in 1925, O'Keeffe began a series of paintings of the
New York skyscrapers and skyline.
One of her most notable works, which demonstrates her skill at depicting the buildings in the Precisionist style, is the ''Radiator Building–Night, New York''.
Other examples are ''New York Street with Moon'' (1925), ''The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y.'' (1926),
and ''City Night'' (1926).
She made a cityscape, ''East River from the Thirtieth Story of the Shelton Hotel'' in 1928, a painting of her view of the
East River
The East River is a saltwater Estuary, tidal estuary or strait in New York City. The waterway, which is not a river despite its name, connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates Long Island, ...
and smoke-emitting factories in Queens.
[ The next year she made her final New York City skyline and skyscraper paintings and traveled to New Mexico, which became a source of inspiration for her work.]
The Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...
held a retrospective of her work in 1927. In 1928, Stieglitz announced that six of her calla lily paintings sold to an anonymous buyer in France for US$25,000, but there is no evidence that this transaction occurred the way Stieglitz reported. As a result of the press attention, O'Keeffe's paintings sold at a higher price from that point onward.
New Mexico (1930s–1986)
By 1929, she traveled to Santa Fe for the first time, accompanied by her friend Rebecca (Beck) Strand and stayed in Taos
Taos or TAOS may refer to:
Places
* Taos County, New Mexico, United States
** Taos, New Mexico, a city, the county seat of Taos County, New Mexico
*** Taos art colony, an art colony founded in Taos, New Mexico
** Taos Pueblo, a Native American ...
with Mabel Dodge Luhan, who provided the women with studios. From her room she had a clear view of the Taos Mountains as well as the ''morada'' (meetinghouse) of the ''Hermanos de la Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre Jesús Nazareno'', also known as the Penitentes. She subsequently visited New Mexico on a near-annual basis from 1929 onward, often staying there for several months at a time, returning to New York each winter to exhibit her work at Stieglitz's gallery. O'Keeffe went on many pack trips, exploring the rugged mountains and deserts of the region that summer and later visited the nearby D. H. Lawrence Ranch, where she completed her now famous oil painting, '' The Lawrence Tree'', currently owned by the Wadsworth Athenaeum
The Wadsworth Atheneum is an art museum in Hartford, Connecticut. The Wadsworth is noted for its collections of European Baroque art, ancient Egyptian and Classical bronzes, French and American Impressionism, Impressionist paintings, Hudson Riv ...
in Hartford
Hartford is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The city, located in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County, had a population of 121,054 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 ce ...
, Connecticut
Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...
. O'Keeffe visited and painted the nearby historical San Francisco de Asís Mission Church at Ranchos de Taos. She made several paintings of the church, as had many artists, and her painting of a fragment of it silhouetted against the sky captured it from a unique perspective.
In New Mexico, she collected rocks and bones from the desert floor and made them and the distinctive architectural and landscape forms of the area subjects in her work. Known as a loner, O'Keeffe often explored the land she loved in her Ford Model A, which she purchased and learned to drive in 1929. She often talked about her fondness for Ghost Ranch and northern New Mexico, as in 1943, when she explained, "Such a beautiful, untouched lonely feeling place, such a fine part of what I call the 'Faraway'. It is a place I have painted before ... even now I must do it again."[ O'Keeffe did not work from late 1932 until about the mid-1930s] due to nervous breakdowns. She was a popular artist, receiving commissions while her works were being exhibited in New York and other places.
Skull and desert motifs
In 1933 and 1934, O'Keeffe recuperated in Bermuda
Bermuda is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. The closest land outside the territory is in the American state of North Carolina, about to the west-northwest.
Bermuda is an ...
and returned to New Mexico in 1934.[ In August 1934, she moved to Ghost Ranch, north of Abiquiú. In 1940, she moved into a house on the ranch property. The varicolored cliffs surrounding the ranch inspired some of her most famous landscapes.][ Between 1934 and 1936, she completed a series of landscape paintings inspired by the New Mexico desert, often with prominent depictions of animal skulls, including ''Ram’s Head with Hollyhock'' (1935) and ''Deer's Head with Pedernal'' (1936) as well as '']Summer Days
''Summer Days'' is an erotic visual novel developed by 0verflow, released on June 23, 2006, for Microsoft Windows and later ported as a DVD game and for the PlayStation Portable (PSP). It is the second installment of the ''School Days'' series ...
'' (1936). In 1936, she completed what would become one of her best-known paintings, ''Summer Days''. It depicts a desert scene with a deer skull with vibrant wildflowers. Resembling ''Ram's Head with Hollyhock'', it depicted the skull floating above the horizon.
File:Georgia O'Keeffe Summer Days 1936.jpg, ''Summer Days
''Summer Days'' is an erotic visual novel developed by 0verflow, released on June 23, 2006, for Microsoft Windows and later ported as a DVD game and for the PlayStation Portable (PSP). It is the second installment of the ''School Days'' series ...
'', 1936, oil on canvas, Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...
File:O'Keeffe Georgia Ram's Head.jpg, ''Ram's Head, White Hollyhock-Hills'', 1935, oil on canvas, Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...
Hawaii series
In 1938, the advertising agency N. W. Ayer & Son approached O'Keeffe about creating two paintings for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (now Dole Food Company
Dole plc (previously named Dole Food Company and Standard Fruit Company) is an Irish- American agricultural multinational corporation headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. The company is among the world's largest producers of fruit and vegetables ...
) to use in advertising. Other artists who produced paintings of Hawaii for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company's advertising include Lloyd Sexton Jr., Millard Sheets
Millard Owen Sheets (June 24, 1907 – March 31, 1989) was an American artist, teacher, and architectural designer. He was one of the earliest of the California Scene Painting artists and helped define the art movement. Many of his large-scale b ...
, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Isamu Noguchi
was an American artist, furniture designer and Landscape architecture, landscape architect whose career spanned six decades from the 1920s. Known for his sculpture and public artworks, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Grah ...
, and Miguel Covarrubias
Miguel Covarrubias, also known as José Miguel Covarrubias Duclaud (22 November 1904 — 4 February 1957) was a Mexican painter, caricaturist, illustrator, ethnologist and art historian. Along with his American colleague Matthew W. Stirling, ...
. The offer came at a critical time in O'Keeffe's life: she was 51, and her career seemed to be stalling (critics were calling her focus on New Mexico limited, and branding her desert images "a kind of mass production").[Tony Perrottet (November 30, 2012)]
O'Keeffe's Hawaii
''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
''.
She arrived in Honolulu on February 8, 1939, aboard the SS ''Lurline'' and spent nine weeks in Oahu
Oahu (, , sometimes written Oahu) is the third-largest and most populated island of the Hawaiian Islands and of the U.S. state of Hawaii. The state capital, Honolulu, is on Oahu's southeast coast. The island of Oahu and the uninhabited Northwe ...
, Maui
Maui (; Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ) is the second largest island in the Hawaiian archipelago, at 727.2 square miles (1,883 km2). It is the List of islands of the United States by area, 17th-largest in the United States. Maui is one of ...
, Kauai
Kauai (), anglicized as Kauai ( or ), is one of the main Hawaiian Islands.
It has an area of 562.3 square miles (1,456.4 km2), making it the fourth-largest of the islands and the 21st-largest island in the United States. Kauai lies 73 m ...
, and the island of Hawaii
Hawaii is the List of islands of the United States by area, largest island in the United States, located in the Hawaii, state of Hawaii, the southernmost state in the union. It is the southeasternmost of the Hawaiian Islands, a chain of volcani ...
. By far the most productive and vivid period was on Maui, where she was given complete freedom to explore and paint. She painted flowers, landscapes, and traditional Hawaiian fishhooks. O'Keeffe completed a series of 20 sensual, verdant paintings based on her trip to Hawaii; however, she did not paint the requested pineapple until the Hawaiian Pineapple Company sent a plant to her New York studio.
Abiquiú and landscapes
In 1945, O'Keeffe bought a second house, an abandoned hacienda
A ''hacienda'' ( or ; or ) is an estate (or '' finca''), similar to a Roman '' latifundium'', in Spain and the former Spanish Empire. With origins in Andalusia, ''haciendas'' were variously plantations (perhaps including animals or orchards ...
in Abiquiú, which she renovated into a home and studio. She moved permanently to New Mexico in 1949, spending time at both Ghost Ranch and the Abiquiú house that she made into her studio.
Todd Webb, a photographer she met in the 1940s, moved to New Mexico in 1961. He often made photographs of her, as did numerous other important American photographers, who consistently presented O'Keeffe as a "loner, a severe figure and self-made person." While O'Keeffe was known to have a "prickly personality," Webb's photographs portray her with a kind of "quietness and calm" suggesting a relaxed friendship, and revealing new contours of O'Keeffe's character.
In the 1940s, O'Keeffe made an extensive series of paintings of what is called the "Black Place", about west of her Ghost Ranch house. O'Keeffe said that the Black Place resembled "a mile of elephants with gray hills and white sand at their feet." She made paintings of the "White Place", a white rock formation located near her Abiquiú house. In 1946, she began making the architectural forms of her Abiquiú house—the patio wall and door—subjects in her work. It was in this period that O'Keeffe also worked seriously with photography, providing striking counterparts to her patio and door paintings. Another distinctive painting was ''Ladder to the Moon'', 1958. In the mid-1960s, O'Keeffe produced ''Sky Above Clouds
''Sky Above Clouds'' (1960–1977) is a series of eleven Cloudscape (art), cloudscape paintings by the American modernist painter Georgia O'Keeffe, produced during her late period. The series of paintings is inspired by O'Keeffe's views from he ...
'', a series of cloudscapes inspired by her views from airplane windows. Worcester Art Museum
The Worcester Art Museum houses over 38,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the present day and representing cultures from all over the world. The museum opened in 1898 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Its holdings include Roman mosaics, Europe ...
held a retrospective of her work in 1960 and 10 years later, the Whitney Museum of American Art mounted the ''Georgia O'Keeffe Retrospective Exhibition''.
Beginning in 1946, O'Keeffe worked with the painting conservator Caroline Keck to preserve the visual impression of her paintings. O'Keeffe's stated preference was for her works to be free of dirt, even if removing such soiling caused abrasion to her colors. Keck encouraged O'Keeffe to begin applying acrylic varnishes to her works in order to facilitate their cleaning.
During the 1940s, O'Keeffe had two one-woman retrospectives, the first at the Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. The museum is based in the Art Institute of Chicago Building in Chicago's Grant Park (Chicago), Grant Park. Its collection, stewa ...
(1943). Her second was in 1946, when she was the first woman artist to have a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...
(MoMA) in Manhattan. The Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...
began an effort to create the first catalogue of her work in the mid-1940s.
Late career and death
By 1972, O'Keeffe had lost much of her eyesight due to macular degeneration
Macular degeneration, also known as age-related macular degeneration (AMD or ARMD), is a medical condition which may result in blurred vision, blurred or vision loss, no vision in the center of the visual field. Early on there are often no sym ...
, leaving her with only peripheral vision
Peripheral vision, or ''indirect vision'', is vision as it occurs outside the point of fixation, i.e. away from the center of gaze or, when viewed at large angles, in (or out of) the "corner of one's eye". The vast majority of the area in the ...
. She stopped oil painting without assistance in 1972. In 1973, O'Keeffe hired John Bruce "Juan" Hamilton as a live-in assistant and then a caretaker. Hamilton was a potter. Hamilton taught O'Keeffe to work with clay, encouraged her to resume painting despite her deteriorating eyesight, and helped her write her autobiography. He worked for her for 13 years. The artist's autobiography, ''Georgia O'Keeffe'', published in 1976 by Viking Press
Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheimer and then acqu ...
, featured ''Summer Days'' (1936) on the cover. It became a bestseller. During the 1970s, she made a series of works in watercolor. She continued working in pencil and charcoal until 1984.
O'Keeffe became increasingly frail in her late nineties. She moved to Santa Fe in 1984, where she died on March 6, 1986, at the age of 98. Her body was cremated and her ashes were scattered, as she wished, on the land around Ghost Ranch. Following O'Keeffe's death, her family contested her will because codicils added to it in the 1980s had left most of her $65million estate to Hamilton. The case was ultimately settled out of court in July 1987. The case became a famous precedent in estate planning
Estate planning is the process of anticipating and arranging for the management and disposal of a person's Estate (law), estate during the person's life in preparation for future incapacity or death. The planning includes the bequest of assets to ...
.
Reception
Awards and honors
In 1938, O'Keeffe received an honorary degree of "Doctor of Fine Arts" from the College of William & Mary
The College of William & Mary (abbreviated as W&M) is a public university, public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. Founded in 1693 under a royal charter issued by King William III of England, William III and Queen ...
. Later, O'Keeffe was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, Music of the United States, music, and Visual art of the United States, art. Its fixed number ...
and in 1966 was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
. Among her awards and honors, O'Keeffe received the M. Carey Thomas Award at Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh language, Welsh: ) is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as a ...
in 1971 and two years later received an honorary degree from Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
.
In 1977, President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
* President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment Film and television
*'' Præsident ...
Gerald Ford
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. (born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913December 26, 2006) was the 38th president of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, Ford assumed the p ...
presented O'Keeffe with the Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award of the United States, alongside the Congressional Gold Medal. It is an award bestowed by decision of the president of the United States to "any person recommended to the President ...
, the highest honor awarded to American civilians. In 1985, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts
The National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and Patronage, patrons of the arts. A prestigious American honor, it is the highest honor given to artists and ar ...
by President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party a ...
. In 1993, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame
The National Women's Hall of Fame (NWHF) is an American institution founded to honor and recognize women. It was incorporated in 1969 in Seneca Falls, New York, and first inducted honorees in 1973. As of 2024, the Hall has honored 312 inducte ...
.
Art criticism and scholarship
O'Keeffe's lotus paintings may have deeper ties to vulvar imagery and symbolism. In Egyptian mythology, lotus flowers are a symbol of the womb, and in Indian mythology, they are direct symbols for vulvas. Feminist art historian Linda Nochlin
Linda Nochlin (''née'' Weinberg; January 30, 1931 – October 29, 2017) was an American art historian, Lila Acheson Wallace Professor Emerita of Modern Art at New York University Institute of Fine Arts, and writer. As a prominent feminist art hi ...
, the author of the influential 1971 essay titled " Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?", also interpreted '' Black Iris III'' (1926) as a morphological metaphor for a vulva.
Art dealer Samuel Kootz was one of O'Keeffe's critics who, although considering her to be "the only prominent woman artist" (in the words of Marilyn Hall Mitchell), considered sexual expression in her work (and other artists' work) artistically problematic. Kootz stated that "assertion of sex can only impede the talents of an artist, for it is an act of defiance, of grievance, in which the consciousness of these qualities retards the natural assertions of the painter".
O'Keeffe stood her ground against sexual interpretations of her work, and for fifty years maintained that there was no connection between vulvas and her artwork. Firing back against some of the criticism, O'Keeffe stated, "When people read erotic symbols into my paintings, they're really talking about their own affairs." She attributed other artists' attacks on her work to psychological projection
Psychological projection is a defence mechanism of alterity concerning "inside" ''content'' mistaken to be coming from the "outside" Other. It forms the basis of empathy by the projection of personal experiences to understand someone else's su ...
. O'Keeffe was also seen as a revolutionary feminist; however, the artist rejected these notions, stating that "femaleness is irrelevant" and that "it has nothing to do with art making or accomplishment."
Personal life
In June 1918, O'Keeffe accepted Stieglitz's invitation to move to New York from Texas after he promised to provide her a quiet studio where she could paint. Within a month he took the first of many nude photographs of her at his family's apartment while his wife was away. His wife returned home while their session was still in progress and gave him an ultimatum. Stieglitz left immediately and moved into an apartment in the city with O'Keeffe. In mid-August when they visited Oaklawn, the Stieglitz family summer estate in Lake George in upstate New York, they behaved like two teenagers in love. Also around this time, O'Keeffe became sick during the 1918 flu pandemic
The 1918–1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the Influenza A virus subtype H1N1, H1N1 subtype of the influenz ...
.
In February 1921, Stieglitz's photographs of O'Keeffe were included in a retrospective exhibition at the Anderson Galleries. Stieglitz started photographing O'Keeffe when she visited him in New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
to see her 1917 exhibition, and continued taking photographs, many of which were in the nude. It created a public sensation. When he retired from photography in 1937, he had made more than 350 portraits and more than 200 nude photos of her. In 1978, she wrote about how distant from them she had become, "When I look over the photographs Stieglitz took of me—some of them more than sixty years ago—I wonder who that person is. It is as if in my one life I have lived many lives."
Owing to the legal delays caused by Stieglitz's first wife and her family, it would take six years before he obtained a divorce. O'Keeffe and Stieglitz were married on December 11, 1924. For the rest of their lives together, their relationship was, "a collusion....a system of deals and trade-offs, tacitly agreed to and carried out, for the most part, without the exchange of a word. Preferring avoidance to confrontation on most issues, O'Keeffe was the principal agent of collusion in their union," according to biographer Benita Eisler. They lived primarily in New York City, but spent their summers at his father's family estate, Oaklawn, in Lake George in upstate New York.
O'Keeffe and Stieglitz had an open relationship, which could be painful for O'Keeffe when Stieglitz had affairs with women. In 1928, Stieglitz began a long-term affair with Dorothy Norman, who was also married, and O'Keeffe lost a project to create a mural
A mural is any piece of Graphic arts, graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage.
Word mural in art
The word ''mural'' ...
for Radio City Music Hall
Radio City Music Hall (also known as Radio City) is an entertainment venue and Theater (structure), theater at 1260 Sixth Avenue (Manhattan), Avenue of the Americas, within Rockefeller Center, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York C ...
. She was hospitalized for depression. At the suggestion of Maria Chabot and Mabel Dodge Luhan, O'Keeffe began to spend the summers painting in New Mexico in 1929. She traveled by train with her friend the painter Rebecca Strand, Paul Strand's wife, to Taos, where they lived with their patron
Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows on another. In the history of art, art patronage refers to the support that princes, popes, and other wealthy and influential people ...
who provided them with studio
A studio is a space set aside for creative work of any kind, including art, dance, music and theater.
The word ''studio'' is derived from the , from , from ''studere'', meaning to study or zeal.
Types Art
The studio of any artist, esp ...
s. In 1933, O'Keeffe was hospitalized for two months after suffering a nervous breakdown
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...
, largely due to Stieglitz's affair with Dorothy Norman. She did not paint again until January 1934.[
O'Keeffe continued to visit New Mexico, without her husband, and created a new body of works based upon the desert.] O'Keeffe broke free of "strict gender roles" and adopted "gender neutral" clothing, as did other professional women in Santa Fe and Taos who experienced "psychological space and sexual freedom" there.
Shortly after O'Keeffe arrived for the summer in New Mexico in 1946, Stieglitz suffered a cerebral thrombosis
A thrombus ( thrombi) is a solid or semisolid aggregate from constituents of the blood (platelets, fibrin, red blood cells, white blood cells) within the circulatory system during life. A blood clot is the final product of the blood coagulatio ...
(stroke). She immediately flew to New York to be with him. He died on July 13, 1946. She buried his ashes at Lake George. She spent the next three years mostly in New York settling his estate.
She had a close relationship with Beck Strand. They enjoyed spending time together, traveling, and living with "glee". Strand said that she was most herself when with O'Keeffe. In ''Foursome''—a book about O'Keeffe, Stieglitz, and Beck and Paul Strand— Carolyn Burke argues against the notion that the women were sexually or romantically involved, finding such a reading of their correspondence incongruous with their "passionate ties to their husbands" and "strong heterosexual attractions".
Frida Kahlo
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (; 6 July 1907 – 13 July 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by Culture of Mexico, the country' ...
met O'Keeffe in December 1931 in New York City at the opening of Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera (; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957) was a Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the Mexican muralism, mural movement in Mexican art, Mexican and international art.
Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted mural ...
's solo exhibition at the MOMA, after which a friendship developed. They remained friends, staying in touch when O'Keeffe recuperated from a nervous breakdown in a hospital and then in Bermuda. Both women visited each other's homes on a couple of occasions in the 1950s.
Among guests to visit her at the ranch over the years were Charles and Anne Lindbergh, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell
Roberta Joan Mitchell (née Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian and American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and painter. As one of the most influential singer-songwriters to emerge from the 1960s folk music circuit, Mitch ...
, poet Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of th ...
, and photographer Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his Monochrome photography, black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association ...
. She traveled and camped at "Black Place" often with her friend, Maria Chabot, and later with Eliot Porter.[Porter's photograph, ''Eroded Clay and Rock Flakes, Black Place, New Mexico, July 20, 1953''](_blank)
on cartermuseum.org, in the Amon Carter Museum Eliot Porter Collection Retrieved June 16, 2010
Legacy
Marquette Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin
Madison is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. It is the List of municipalities in Wisconsin by population, second-most populous city in the state, with a population of 269,840 at the 2020 Uni ...
was renamed as Georgia O'Keeffe Middle School.
In 2020, Tymberwood Academy (in Gravesend, Kent, England), pupils chose new class names. One of the winning names for a Year 3 class was Georgia O'Keeffe.
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
O'Keeffe was a legend beginning in the 1920s, known as much for her independent spirit and female role model as for her dramatic and innovative works of art. Nancy and Jules Heller said, "The most remarkable thing about O'Keeffe was the audacity and uniqueness of her early work." At that time, even in Europe, there were few artists exploring abstraction. Even though her works may show elements of different modernist movements, such as Surrealism and Precisionism, her work is uniquely her own style.
A substantial part of her estate's assets were transferred to the Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation, a nonprofit. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum opened in Santa Fe in 1997. The assets included a large body of her work, photographs, archival materials, and her Abiquiú house, library, and property. The Georgia O'Keeffe Home and Studio in Abiquiú was designated a National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a National Register of Historic Places property types, building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the Federal government of the United States, United States government f ...
in 1998, and is now owned by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. A fossilized species of archosaur
Archosauria () or archosaurs () is a clade of diapsid sauropsid tetrapods, with birds and crocodilians being the only extant taxon, extant representatives. Although broadly classified as reptiles, which traditionally exclude birds, the cladistics ...
was named '' Effigia okeeffeae'' ("O'Keeffe's Ghost") in January 2006, "in honor of Georgia O'Keeffe for her numerous paintings of the badlands at Ghost Ranch and her interest in the ''Coelophysis
''Coelophysis'' ( Traditional English pronunciation of Latin, traditionally; or , as heard more commonly in recent decades) is a genus of coelophysid Theropoda, theropod dinosaur that lived Approximation, approximately 215 to 201.4 million y ...
'' Quarry when it was discovered". In November 2016, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum recognized the importance of her time in Charlottesville by dedicating an exhibition, using watercolors that she had created over three summers. It was entitled, O'Keeffe at the University of Virginia, 1912–1914.
Popular culture
In 1991, PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...
aired the ''American Playhouse
''American Playhouse'' is an American anthology television series periodically broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).
It premiered on January 12, 1982, with ''The Shady Hill Kidnapping'', written and narrated by John Cheever and direc ...
'' production ''A Marriage: Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz'', starring Jane Alexander
Jane Alexander (née Quigley; born October 28, 1939) is an American-Canadian actress and author. She is the recipient of two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, and nominations for four Academy Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards. From 1993 ...
as O'Keeffe and Christopher Plummer
Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer (December 13, 1929 – February 5, 2021) was a Canadian actor. His career spanned seven decades, gaining him recognition for his performances in film, stage and television. His accolades included an Academy Aw ...
as Alfred Stieglitz. In 1996, the U.S. Postal Service
The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or simply the Postal Service, is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the executive branch of the federal governmen ...
issued a 32-cent stamp honoring O'Keeffe. In 2013, on the 100th anniversary of the Armory Show
The 1913 Armory Show, also known as the International Exhibition of Modern Art, was organized by thAssociation of American Painters and Sculptors It was the first large exhibition of modern art in America, as well as one of the many exhibition ...
, the USPS issued a stamp featuring O'Keeffe's ''Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico/Out Back of Marie's II, 1930'' as part of their Modern Art in America series. Lifetime Television
Lifetime is an American basic cable channel that is part of Lifetime Entertainment Services, a subsidiary of A&E Networks, which is jointly owned by Hearst Communications and The Walt Disney Company. It features programming that is geared toward ...
produced a biopic of Georgia O'Keeffe starring Joan Allen
Joan Allen (born August 20, 1956) is an American actress. Known for her work on stage and screen, she has received a Tony Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Golden Globe Awa ...
as O'Keeffe, Jeremy Irons
Jeremy John Irons (; born 19 September 1948) is an English actor. Known for his roles on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a Tony Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards, ...
as Alfred Stieglitz, Henry Simmons as Jean Toomer, Ed Begley Jr. as Stieglitz's brother Lee, and Tyne Daly
Ellen Tyne Daly (; born February 21, 1946) is an American actress whose six-decade career included many leading roles in movies and theater. She has won six Emmy Awards for her television work, a Tony Award, and is a 2011 American Theatre Hall of ...
as Mabel Dodge Luhan. It premiered on September 19, 2009.
On November 20, 2014, O'Keeffe's '' Jimson Weed/White Flower No 1'' (1932) sold for $44,405,000 in 2014 at auction to Walmart
Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...
heiress Alice Walton, more than three times the previous world auction record for any female artist.
Women's suffrage and feminism
In ''Equal Under the Sky: Georgia O'Keeffe and Twentieth Century Feminism'', Linda M. Grasso documents O'Keeffe's life-long involvement in feminism and women's issues. O'Keeffe came of age as a woman and an artist in the 1910s, at the height of the women's suffrage movement
Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...
and the intense artistic ferment of modernism
Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
. Grasso notes that "Modernists championed rupture, innovation, and daring in art forms, styles, and perspectives," and that O'Keeffe "first created herself as an artist when feminism and modernism were interlinked". As early as 1915, O'Keeffe was reading books and articles on women's suffrage and cultural politics with enthusiasm, such as Floyd Dell's ''Women as World Builders: Studies in Modern Feminism''. There was much talk in this era about the "New Woman
The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century and had a profound influence well into the 20th century. In 1894, writer Sarah Grand (1854–1943) used the term "new woman" in an influential article to refer to indepe ...
," liberated from Victorian strictures and mores and pursuing her own life and education and self-expression freely. O'Keeffe was in active dialogue with her suffragist friend Anita Pollitzer, with whom she exchanged letters on the subject. Pollitzer, in fact, was the first person to introduce Alfred Stieglitz to O'Keeffe's art work. She was also reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman (; née Perkins; July 3, 1860 – August 17, 1935), also known by her first married name Charlotte Perkins Stetson, was an American humanist, novelist, writer, lecturer, early sociologist, advocate for social reform ...
and Olive Schreiner
Olive Schreiner (24 March 1855 – 11 December 1920) was a South African author, anti-war campaigner and intellectual. She is best remembered today for her novel '' The Story of an African Farm'' (1883), which has been highly acclaimed. It dea ...
, among others, alongside the radical magazine '' The Masses'', and lecturing on modernist dancer Isadora Duncan
Angela Isadora Duncan (May 26, 1877, or May 27, 1878 – September 14, 1927) was an American-born dancer and choreographer, who was a pioneer of modern contemporary dance and performed to great acclaim throughout Europe and the United States. Bor ...
. In a debate with Michael Gold
Michael Gold (April 12, 1893 – May 14, 1967) was the pen-name of Jewish-American writer Itzhok Isaak Granich. A lifelong communist, Gold was a novelist, journalist, magazine editor, newspaper columnist, playwright, and literary critic. His semi ...
in 1930, O'Keeffe said she was "interested in the oppression of women of all classes". Gross writes: "She sustained an affiliation with the National Woman's Party and made public statements about gender discrimination and women's rights in interviews, speeches, letters, and articles into the 1970s."
She received unprecedented acceptance as a woman artist from the fine art world due to her powerful graphic images and within a decade of moving to New York City, she was the highest-paid American woman artist. She was known for a distinctive style in all aspects of her life.
Mary Beth Edelson
Mary Elizabeth Edelson (; February 6, 1933 – April 20, 2021) was an American artist and pioneer of the feminist art movement in the United States, feminist art movement, deemed one of the notable "first-generation feminist artists". Edelson ...
's ''Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper'' (1972) appropriated Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 - 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested o ...
's ''The Last Supper'', with the heads of notable women artists collaged over the heads of Christ and his apostles. John the Apostle
John the Apostle (; ; ), also known as Saint John the Beloved and, in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Saint John the Theologian, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus according to the New Testament. Generally listed as the youngest apostle, he ...
's head was replaced with Nancy Graves
Nancy Graves (December 23, 1939 – October 21, 1995) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and sometime filmmaker known for her focus on natural phenomena like camels or maps of the Moon. Her works are included in many public collection ...
, and Christ's with Georgia O'Keeffe. This image, addressing the role of religious and art historical iconography in the subordination of women, became "one of the most iconic images of the feminist art movement
The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce feminist art, art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of co ...
." Judy Chicago
Judy Chicago (born Judith Sylvia Cohen; July 20, 1939) is an American feminist artist, art educator, and writer known for her large collaborative art installation pieces about birth and creation images, which examine the role of women in history ...
gave O'Keeffe a prominent place in her ''The Dinner Party
''The Dinner Party'' is an installation artwork by American feminist artist Judy Chicago. There are 39 elaborate place settings on a triangular table for 39 mythical and historical famous women. Sacajawea, Sojourner Truth, Eleanor of Aquitaine, ...
'' (1979) in recognition of what many prominent feminist artists considered groundbreaking introduction of sensual and feminist imagery in her works of art.[.] Although feminists celebrated O'Keeffe as the originator of " female iconography", she did not consider herself a feminist. She disliked being called a "woman artist" and wanted to be considered an "artist."
Publications
*
*
*
;From her correspondence
*
*
Notes
Citations
References
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External links
Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Collections Online
* Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...
Information System
paintings
ttps://collections.si.edu/search/results.htm?q=%22Georgia+O%27Keeffe%22&fq=name%3A%22O%27Keeffe%2C+Georgia%22&fq=object_type:%22Photographs%22 photographs an
sculpture
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MoMA 2023 installation:
"Georgia O'Keeffe: To See Takes Time"
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Patricia Marroquin Norby and Samantha Friedman
curators, comment on Georgia O'Keeffe, ''Untitled (Patio Door)'', 1946, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
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Patricia Marroquin Norby
Native American curator, comments on Georgia O'Keeffe, ''Eagle Claw and Bean Necklace, 1934, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
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at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library () is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books and manuscripts and ...
at Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
(archived copy)
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O'Keeffe!
', a solo actor play by Lucinda McDermott, Playscripts, Inc.
{{DEFAULTSORT:OKeeffe, Georgia
1887 births
1986 deaths
20th-century American painters
American abstract painters
American people of Hungarian descent
American people of Irish descent
American watercolorists
Art Students League of New York alumni
Artists from Santa Fe, New Mexico
Cowgirl Hall of Fame inductees
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American flower artists
Hawaii artists
Painters from New York City
Painters from Wisconsin
People from Abiquiú, New Mexico
People from Amarillo, Texas
People from Sun Prairie, Wisconsin
People with mood disorders
Precisionism
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni
Students of William Merritt Chase
Teachers College, Columbia University alumni
United States National Medal of Arts recipients
University of Virginia alumni
West Texas A&M University faculty
American women watercolorists
20th-century American women painters