Art In Action: O’Keeffe’s Modern Art Evolves
By Dee Anna Muraski
Guest Author
Georgia O’Keeffe held tremendous influence on Modern Art during her 60-year career in art. Today her work is displayed prominently in The Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, both in New York and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia – to name just a few.
O’Keeffe fought to assert her work was non-symbolic, natural and musical. Husband Stieglitz did not help her assertions as he continued to promote his photographic nudes of her saying, “sex sells.” When presenting a few of her rare portraits to a friend and photographer Paul Strand, O’Keeffe commented she had “sung [him] three songs in paint, it’s all the same song sung different ways.”
O’Keeffe also saw her paintings as a journal of her life – capturing the elusive, ephemeral, natural elements surrounding her.
O’Keeffe did not travel much outside of the states until her late 60’s into her 90’s, and only to South Carolina, Texas, New York and New Mexico in The United States. In my opinion, this is what affixed the world’s adoration on O’Keeffe–her ability to connect nature, which is inherent to us all, regardless of where we live. This is particularly true of her North Star series. No matter where most of us are in the world, we can relate to seeing the elusive North Star – it connects us and warms our hearts.
Due to the negative sexual associations of her abstracts, O’Keeffe turned to another medium: oil; another subject: flowers; and another scale: large. Stieglitz, disapproved of the change, but the public immediately embraced this new direction as revolutionary and groundbreaking.
(Photo of Jimson Weed Provided) No small feat for a female during this historical time frame. Her flower magnification was unique and novel at the time. She stated “Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.”
During this time, O’Keeffe’s husband, who was openly unfaithful, started an affair with Dorothy Newman that would last until his death. Suffering from depression, O’Keeffe retreated to New Mexico with friends and became uplifted by the vast open landscape and connection to nature. Not surprisingly, her work transitioned to paintings of churches, rotting animal skulls, death, and religious inferences.
Local readers will be interested to know she obtained one skull from Robert Johnson of Johnson Pharmaceutical which subsequently became Johnson & Johnson. The painting was entitled “Bob’s Steer Head” from 1936 and depicted a natural skull, not one traditionally bleached by sun and elements.
O’Keeffe reevaluated her life, marriage, work and what she wanted to say through her work. New York had always quelled the introverted O’Keeffe; thus, the quiet, uninhibited New Mexico landscape made her “feel like myself – and I like it.” She spent a substantial amount of time at the secluded Ghost Ranch, meeting up with friends like: Ansel Adams, Charles and Anne Lindbergh, and Gerald Heard.
O’Keeffe made a permanent move to Ghost Ranch, New Mexico three years after the death of Stieglitz in 1946. Her house in Abiquiu is home to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and National Historic Landmark. She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and National Medal of Arts. In her later years, she traveled extensively and returned to her early abstract years in her painting projects.
O’Keeffe died in 1986 and, per her request, there was no funeral only her ashes scattered atop Pedernal, her favorite mountain. Late in life O’Keeffe stated, “I find that I have painted my life – things happening in my life – without knowing.” Indeed, she did.
Upcoming and Current Events:
- Susan Ring exhibit hours are from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday at Warsaw City Hall Gallery.
- Congratulations to Steve Creighton on his recent national art award.