Georgia O

’keefe Essay, Research Paper

Georgia O’Keeffe Born in 1887 in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, studied at the Art Institute of Chicago during 1905 and the Art Students League in New York City from 1907-1908. She worked briefly as a commercial artist in Chicago, and in 1912 she became interested in the principles of Oriental design. After working as a public school art supervisor in Amarillo, Texas from 1912-1914 she attended art classes conducted by Arthur Wesley Dow at Columbia University. She instituted Dow’s system of art education, based on recurring themes in Oriental art in her teacher-training courses at West Texas State Normal College, where she served as department head from 1916-1918. In 1916 Alfred Stieglitz, the well-known New York photographer and a major proponent of modernism, exhibited some of Georgia O’Keeffe’s abstract drawings. In 1924 O’Keeffe and Stieglitz were married.

Georgia O’Keeffe began her training early with private art lessons at home. She continued to pursue art through high school, studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 1907, enrolled in the Art Students League in New York City. Moving to Texas in 1912, O’Keeffe accepted a position as supervisor of art in the public schools of Amarillo. During her summers, she studied and taught art at the University of Virginia, working with Alon Bement, who introduced her to the theories of Arthur Wesley Dow. Returning to New York in 1914, she enrolled at Columbia Teachers College to study under Dow, whom she later credited as the strongest influence on the development of her art. While teaching at Columbia College in Columbia, South Carolina, she discarded academic training and began a new series of highly personal abstractions in charcoal.

In 1916, O’Keeffe’s friend Anita Politzer showed some of these abstract drawings to famed photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who exhibited them at his avant-garde gallery. In 1918, at Stieglitz’s invitation, O’Keeffe returned to New York from Texas and accepted his offer of financial support allowing her to paint full time. They were married six years later.

Painting seasonally at Lake George and in Manhattan, O’Keeffe reflected the influences of place in her work.“ 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.”(Hogrefe, pg 78) Her annual exhibits at Stieglitz’s galleries and subsequent museum shows established her as a major figure in American Modernism and propelled her to international fame.

In her yearly visits to New Mexico, being a loner, Georgia wanted to explore this wonderful place on her own. She bought a Model A Ford and asked others to teach her how to drive. After one particularly exasperating moment, one of her teachers declared that she was unable to learn the art of driving. Only her determination was to lead to mastering her machine. She would travel the back roads in the Model A…having removed the backseat, would unbolt the front seat, turning it around so that she could prop her canvas against the back wall of the car.

After her second visit to New Mexico in 1929, O’Keeffe returned for many summers to live and paint the magnificent landscapes she came to cherish. Georgia would return to “her land” each summer. In 1940, she acquired a house at Ghost Ranch where she worked during her visits. After Stieglitz’s death in New York in 1946, O’Keeffe spent three years in the city settling his estate. In 1949 at age 62, she made New Mexico her permanent residence, dividing her time between her summer home at Ghost Ranch and an adobe house she had renovated in the historic village of Abiquiu.

O’Keeffe traveled internationally, painted and continued to enjoy her status as one of the top American artist. Throughout her life, O’Keeffe made contributions to the history of American art. In 1977, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Gerald R. Ford.

Always a unique style, Lake George, Coat and Red (1919), a most important example of O’Keeffe’s early abstract style, was a roughly brushed composition in which a twisted, mysterious form looms against a rainbow-hued sky. Early in her career she developed a personal, extremely refined style, favoring strangely natural abstract subject matter such as flower details and severe architectural themes.

In 1923, O’Keeffe began painting flowers and leaves, creating some of her best-known work. Oriental Poppies and related flower paintings have been seen by some scholars as her response to such modern photographers as Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, who “zoomed in” on and closely cropped their subject in an attempt to discover its core spirit. O’Keeffe emulates this technique in her compositions. By creating an oversized close-up of the poppies and removing them from any noticeable context, she abstracts the organic forms into black and red shapes.

In Oak Leaves, Pink and Gray, O’Keeffe examines every crevice and vein of the leaves, exploring the harmony of decay and rebirth in nature, a theme prevalent in her work. Here, O’Keeffe has created a composition that is objective, because the leaves are a recognizable subject, and abstract, because the broad expanse of color compels a person to read the image in terms of pure form and color.” I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty. Nobody sees a fl