This Month in
Art Literacy
Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe
1887-1986
American Painter
G
eorgia O’Keeffe was one of the most free-thinking artists who helped bring American art into
the 20th century Modernist mainstream. She
was born in Wisconsin in 1887, and following high
school, she studied art in Chicago at the Art Institute
and in New York at the Art Students League; her art
teachers taught her the importance of design and to
fill space in a beautiful way. Perhaps more symbolic
than abstract, O’Keeffe’s paintings of simplified,
enlarged and isolated natural forms expressed the
spirituality of both nature and the artist herself. Nature
was her inspiration, and the goal of her art was the
expression of her personal ideas and feelings, as well
as harmonious arrangements of shapes and colors.
O’Keeffe has come to be associated with a group of
20th century artists, including Charles Sheeler and
Charles Demuth, known as the Precisionists. These
artists straddled the boundary between representational
art and abstraction by reducing their images to spare
geometric forms. This precisionism was demonstrated
in O’Keeffe’s paintings of magnified flowers. Her
images, although representational, became abstract
studies of color and shape when viewed without the
context of their complete subject matter. In her later
career, she was entranced by the spare landscapes of
the American Southwest; her paintings of the red
sunsets, black rocks and rippling cliffs of New Mexico
were images using broad, simple forms.
O’Keeffe was married in 1924 to Alfred Stieglitz, a
New York photographer, gallery owner and champion
of modern art who was 24 years her senior. He tirelessly promoted her paintings (and those of other
modern artists) until his death in 1946. After settling
his affairs, O’Keeffe moved permanently to New
Mexico. There she continued to paint in her own idiosyncratic style until her own death in 1986. Her work
influenced American artists Helen Frankenthaler and
Andrew Wyeth, and her paintings continue to have a
powerful effect to this day.
Vocabulary
Abstract—In art, a departure from natural appearances in order to create new arrangements of lines,
colors, shapes, forms and textures.
Revised 12/05
Scale—The relationship (smaller or larger) of an
object to its representation in a drawing or painting.
Point-of-view—The location or angle from which a
subject is viewed.
Elements
Color—The sensation resulting from reflection or
absorption of light by a surface. Color has three properties: hue, which is the name of the color; value,
which is the lightness or darkness of the color; and
intensity, which refers to the purity of the hue. In a
painting, warm colors seem to advance toward the
viewer, while cool colors seem to recede. Color established the shapes in O’Keeffe’s paintings, and she
often used contrasts of warm and cool colors to create
emphasis. Her use of color and magnification was
overwhelming.
Shape—Shape is an area contained within an implied
line and defined or identified because of color or
value changes. Shapes have two dimensions, height
and width, and can be geometric (triangular, circular,
rectangular) or organic (free-form or as found in
nature, such as leaves, flowers, mountains, or clouds).
Shapes can also be positive (a representational shape)
or negative (the background upon which the shape
rests). O’Keeffe often magnified the scale of the
shapes in her paintings. At other times, she isolated
shapes on the canvas to create focal points.
Principles
Contrast—Contrast refers to differences in values,
colors, textures, shapes and other elements in an artwork that create visual excitement. Shape contrast
occurs when organic shapes are placed in a geometric
environment. Value contrast is most evident when
black is next to white or when light values are placed
next to dark values. O’Keeffe used value contrasts to
help define the shapes in her paintings and used color
contrasts to create emphasis.
Emphasis—Emphasis is used by artists to create
dominance and focus in their work. Placement in the
center, isolation, strong values, or shape contrasts can
all be used by the artist to draw attention to the most
important aspects of a painting. Emphasis in
O’Keeffe’s paintings was created by the placement
and isolation of her subjects, in addition to the use of
strong values and contrasts.
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Georgia O’Keeffe
U
s ing nature as her inspiration, Georgia
O’Keeffe developed a highly visible, personal
style without parallel in American painting.
Recognized as one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, with her life spanning almost 100 years,
Georgia O’Keeffe created paintings that had a powerful effect on other artists and on the public. She was
in the front ranks among her contemporaries of both
sexes, breaking convention and setting direction
for decades.
On November 15, 1887, Georgia O’Keeffe was born
in the small town of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Her parents, Francis and Ida, had immigrated from Ireland
after the failure of a wool business. Her father, funloving and hard working, became a successful farmer
in America. Georgia was the second of seven children
and the first daughter born to the O’Keeffes. She
spent her childhood among the animals, corn fields,
wild flowers and wide sky of the flat plains. From the
time she was very young she was known for her
intense love of nature.
Her mother, in contrast to her fun-loving father, was
very demanding and undemonstrative. But she was
also well-educated and intellectually inclined, and she
insisted on the best educational opportunities for her
children. As part of her daughter’s education, Ida
O’Keeffe gave Georgia books from which to study
drawing and arranged painting lessons for her when
she was twelve. Georgia soon knew, with no uncertainty, that she wanted to be an artist.
The first fourteen years of O’Keeffe’s life were spent
in comfort and security among a large, stable family.
However, when she was 14, three of her brothers died
of tuberculosis, prompting the family to move to
Virginia in search of a warmer climate. Georgia was
sent to a boarding school, and later went to college at
Chatham Episcopal Institute, which was situated in
Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. She was the only
northerner in the decidedly southern academy, and it
was at this time that she became known as an independent eccentric. While all the other girls wore the
frilly, feminine clothes that were popular in that day,
Georgia dressed as she pleased, in simple, austere,
loose-fitting dresses. She also wore her hair pulled
back in a simple fashion that she never changed. Yet,
while maintaining her reputation as a nonconformist,
she was also very social, joining clubs, playing sports
and enjoying many friends.
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Biography
When O’Keeffe graduated from Chatham in 1905 at
the age of 17, she went to study art at the Art Institute
of Chicago. She remembered that time as strange and
full of surprises, but mostly unpleasant. Her instructor
gave endless lectures of drawing the human figure
and Georgia was forced to draw male nudes, something she found to be embarrassing and repugnant.
Although she eventually became accustomed to nude
models and her work was judged favorably, she was
never interested in painting the human figure. In her
entire body of work there are almost no studies of the
human form, and the few nudes she painted were of
the female body.
After leaving the Chicago Art Institute, her training
was interrupted by a lengthy bout of typhoid fever.
When she recovered, she went to New York City to
study at the Art Students League under the tutelage of
William Merritt Chase, a renowned still-life artist.
She loved her classes and her work won her the distinguished Chase Scholarship, which enabled her to
continue her studies. She was determined that she
would be the woman to make a breakthrough in the
male-dominated art world.
In 1908, Goergia and her friends visited a gallery in
New York City. The gallery, known as 291 (the
gallery’s address on Fifth Avenue), was owned by
Alfred Stieglitz, one of the most famous photographers of his day and a champion of new unconventional artworks. His gallery provided a place for
avante-garde artists to meet and to display their
works. O’Keeffe could not have known at the time
that Stieglitz would play a huge role in her life.
In 1912, O’Keeffe secured a teaching position with the
public schools in Amarillo, Texas. She fell in love with
the landscape there. “That was my country, “ she said
of the Amarillo plains, “terrible winds and a wonderful emptiness.” Her love of hot, dry, empty landscapes
would stay with her for the rest of her life. After being
introduced to the West, she always felt its pull, but she
also felt the need to be in New York, the center of all
that was happening in the American art scene.
Before leaving for Texas, however, O’Keeffe took a
summer course for art teachers at the University of
Virginia, Charlottesville, taught by Alon Bement of
Teachers College, Columbia University. Bement
introduced O’Keeffe to the then-revolutionary ideas
of his colleague at Teachers College, artist and art
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Georgia O’Keeffe
educator, Arthur Wesley Dow.
Dow believed that the goal of art was the expression
of the artist’s personal ideas and feelings and that such
subject matter was best realized through harmonious
arrangements of line, color, and notan (the Japanese
system of lights and darks). Dow’s ideas offered
O’Keeffe an alternative to imitative realism, and
keeping Dow’s teachings in mind, she experimented
with her paintings for two years, both while she was
teaching art in the Amarillo, Texas public schools and
working summers in Virginia as Bement’s assistant.
O’Keeffe was in New York again from the autumn of
1914 to June, 1915, taking courses at Teachers
College. By the fall of 1915, she was teaching art at
Columbia College, in Columbia, South Carolina, and
decided to put Dow’s theories to the test. In an attempt
to discover a personal language through which she
could express her own feelings and ideas, she began a
series of abstract charcoal drawings that are now recognized as being among the most innovative in all of
American art of the period. She mailed some of these
drawings to a former Columbia classmate who took
them to show Alfred Stieglitz at 291.
Stieglitz began corresponding with O’Keeffe, telling
her he wanted to exhibit her works. He wrote, “My
dear Miss O’Keeffe, What am I to say? It is impossible for me to put into words what I saw and felt in
your drawings…they’re the purest, fairest, sincerest
things that have entered 291 for a long time.”
O’Keeffe returned to New York that spring of 1916 to
attend classes at Teachers College, and Stieglitz
exhibited 10 of her charcoal abstractions in May at his
gallery. A year later, he filled his exhibition space with
a one-person exhibition of her work. From that introduction in 1916 until his death in 1946, the lives of
Stieglitz and O’Keeffe were intertwined. They fell in
love in spite of an age difference of 24 years, and in
1924, the two were married. They did not exchange
rings, however, and O’Keeffe insisted on keeping her
own last name.
The one-woman show at 291 in 1917 prompted a New
York art critic to say, “for if there were a raging, blazing soul mounting to the skies, it is that of Georgia
O’Keeffe.” She was called the woman with magic
tubes and brushes that brought color to life, and
another critic said that in viewing her work, you felt
as if “each color almost regains the fun it must have
Revised 12/05
Biography
felt within itself on forming the first rainbow.” Her
work shook New York with excitement and scandal.
She became Stieglitz’s main photographic study and
he took hundreds of photos of her, most of them nude,
sensuous and entrancing. Georgia O’Keeffe demonstrated great daring to lay herself bare, literally in
photos and figuratively through her paintings. The
self-revelation of these early years with Stieglitz gave
way in her later years to a fierce demand for privacy
and solitude.
It was during the early years with Stieglitz that
O’Keeffe began painting flowers as they had never
been painted before. She drew them as if she were a
bee, and sometimes only painted part of the whole,
the rest cropped off the edge of the canvas. She wanted to startle people into paying attention to nature’s
images in new ways. She said of a flower, “…nobody
sees a flower, really, it is so small we haven’t time and
to see it takes time, like having a friend takes time…
So I said to myself—I’ll paint what I see—what a
flower is to me, but I’ll paint it big so they will be surprised into taking time to look at it.” The scale of
these paintings stunned viewers. The largest painting
was 6’ x 7’, yet the portion painted of the actual object
measured mere inches. Flowers were shown in
extreme close-up and in minute detail. The combination of scale and color was overwhelming.
As the years went on, the relationship between
O’Keeffe and Stieglitz became more complex. He
explored her every move in his photographs.
Artistically, they had a deep respect, mutual appreciation and admiration for each other’s work. They
shared a love for the outdoors and for music and
books, but the difference in their age was significant,
and the differences in their personalities became divisive. Stieglitz loved and thrived on being around people, being surrounded by conversation and stimulation. He disliked travel and seldom left New York.
O’Keeffe, by contrast, loved to travel and was bored
by long conversation. More and more she preferred a
solitary life, and she was drawn to open country and
silence. In 1929, she began to spend her summers in
New Mexico. She loved the vast empty spaces, the
hard dry earth, dramatic hills and desert landscape.
She bought a home there, but could never convince
Stieglitz to join her. Their later relationship became a
battle of wills: Stieglitz became interested in a
younger woman; O’Keeffe refused to exhibit what
and where he wanted her to. They were both plagued
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Georgia O’Keeffe
with health problems, yet despite this O’Keeffe spent
a great deal of time nursing Stieglitz in his later years.
Stieglitz died of a coronary in 1946 at the age of 82.
O’Keeffe was 59. She spent the next two years settling his estate and then moved permanently to
New Mexico.
In 1962, O’Keeffe was elected to the 50 member
American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1970, she
received the gold medal for painting of the National
Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1977, President
Gerald Ford presented her with the Presidential Medal
of Freedom. Toward the late 1960s, O’Keeffe’s eyesight began to deteriorate. She met potter Juan
Hamilton in 1973 when he introduced himself to
O’Keeffe and began doing household jobs for the
artist. Hamilton eventually became O’Keeffe’s very
close companion. He assisted her with her final artworks. (He also arranged for O’Keeffe to sign a codicil to her will that left him virtually all of her property.) Although she completed her final unassisted work
in oil in 1972, she was able to work unassisted in
watercolor and charcoal until 1978 and in graphite
until 1984.
A final triumph for Georgia occured in April 1985,
when President Ronald Reagan awarded her the
National Medal of Arts. A little less than a year later,
on March 6, 1986, Georgia O'Keeffe died in Santa Fe
at the age of ninety-eight. She was cremated and her
ashes scattered at her New Mexico home, which was
called Ghost Ranch.
Biography
of Art, in Washington, D.C. That she was one of the
most important American artists of the 20th century
is undisputed.
Bibliography
Georgia O’Keeffe, by Elizabeth Montgomery, © 1993 by
Brompton Books Corporation, Greenwich, Connecticut
Georgia O’Keeffe, © 1976 by Georgia O’Keeffe and published by The Viking Press, New York City
A Woma n on Paper: The Le tters and Memoir of a
Legendary Friendship, by Anita Pollitzer, © 1988 by The
Estate of Anita Pollitzer, published by Simon and Schuster,
Inc., New York
Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists: Georgia
O’Keeffe, by Mike Venezia, © 1993 by Mike Venezia and
published by Children’s P ress, a Division of Grolier
Publishing, Danbury, Connecticut
Georgia O’ Kee ffe: One Hundred Flowers, edite d by
Nicholas Callaway, © 1987 by Callaway Editions, Inc. and
published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, New York
Georgia O’Keeffe, by Lisa Mintz Messenger, © 1988 by
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and published by Thames
and Hudson, Inc., New York
Following O’Keeffe’s death, her family contested her
will and Hamilton was charged in New Mexico with
using undue influence over the ailing artist. The lawsuit was settled out of court and a not-for-profit foundation was established to oversee the disposition of
her works to nonprofit organizations by 2006. As of
May 2005 the foundations assets were to be donated
to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, a museum established in Santa Fe in 1997 dedicated to perpetuating
the artistic legacy of O’Keeffe. Her personal papers
were given to the Beinecke Library at Yale.
Permanent collections of O’Keeffe’s work include
those at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney
Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York City; the Art Institute of
Chicago; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the
Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the National Gallery
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Georgia O’Keeffe
Scanning Questions
Scanning Slide
Jack in the Pulpit IV
1930, oil on canvas, 40” x 30”, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D. C.
Art Elements: What you see.
Color
•
•
Do you see cool or warm colors? (Cool colors.)
How does color help to define the shape of the petal? (The dark edges of the petal contrasting against a
lighter background help emphasize their shape.)
Shape
•
•
Are the shapes you see organic or geometric? (Organic.)
Where are parts of the petal missing or cropped at the edges of the canvas? (At the left, right and bottom
of the canvas.)
Art Principles: How the elements are arranged.
Contrast
•
•
Where is the area of greatest color contrast? (The halo of white surrounding the darker center.)
Where do you see shape contrast? (The pointed halo of white in the center contrasts with the oval shape
within in.)
Emphasis
•
•
How does color help to create emphasis? (The interior of the flower is emphasized by the halo of white
surrounding the darker center.)
How does the size of the image help to create emphasis? (It is scaled so large that it takes up the entire
canvas space.)
Technical Properties: How it was made.
•
•
Do you think this painting is large or small? (Large, nearly 3 ft. x 3 ft.)
Why do you think O’Keeffe made the image so big?
Expressive Properties: How it makes you feel.
•
•
How does this close-up image of the flower influence how you feel about it?
Does looking at this painting make you curious to see what a jack-in-the-pulpit really looks like?
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Georgia O’Keeffe
Slide Images
1
3
4
2
5
6
7
8
10
11
9
12
13
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Georgia O’Keeffe
1.
Slide List
Photo of Georgia O’Keeffe with Horse’s Skull
1948, photo by Philippe Halsman
This portrait shows Georgia O’Keeffe at the height of her career. Her husband, Alfred
Stieglitz, passed away two years before this photo was taken, and by 1948 she moved permanently to New Mexico. The skull in the background symbolized the images of the dry
southwest that she loved so much.
2.
Light Coming on the Plains II
1917, watercolor, 12” x 9”, Amon Carter Museum, Ft. Worth, Texas
Very early in her career, Georgia O’Keeffe came to her own conclusions about the artist
she wanted to be. As she said herself, “I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least
paint as I wanted to and say what I wanted to when I painted as that seemed to be the only
thing I could do that didn’t concern anybody but myself—that was nobody’s business but
my own.…I found that I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say in any
other way—things that I had no words for.” This simple abstract painting reflects that
philosophy.
In this painting, color and shape show O’Keeffe’s vision of the lights from town on the
flat Texas landscape in the dark of night. When O’Keeffe became the supervisor of art
education for the public schools in Amarillo, Texas in 1912, it was still a frontier town. It
had no paved roads or fences. One of the evening pastimes O’Keeffe enjoyed was walking out of town across the flat prairie and then turning around and being guided back to
town by the lights.
How did O’Keeffe
achieve emphasis
in this painting?
Only shades of blue create the scene, with shapes created entirely from color. A flat area
of darkest blue color is seen at the bottom of the painting, creating a horizon line and a
base for a larger ovoid shape above it. A bright area of white rests at the horizon line and
gradually melts into increasingly darker values of blue as you move higher into the shape
(the night sky). The contrast between the two white areas (circular shape and the white
area along the horizon) and the dark blue below the horizon line gives emphasis to
both areas.
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Georgia O’Keeffe
3.
Slide List
Blue and Green Music
1919, oil on canvas, 23” x 19”, The Art Institute of Chicago
By early 1919, O’Keeffe knew that she wanted to take a year off to just paint. Alfred
Stieglitz, who had become her friend and was an ardent admirer of her talents, gave her
that opportunity by offering her a large space in his brother’s New York brownstown
where she could live and work. In this space, and encouraged by Stieglitz, she continued
to develop the abstractions and flower paintings that she had begun during her teaching
days, and also painted a series of works that were inspired by music. Her feelings were
conveyed in these canvases through clear organization and clear-cut shapes and colors.
This totally non-representational painting is from the series that was music-inspired. A
large triangular shape dominates the canvas. Wavy lines of cool colors, both inside and
outside this shape, create organic shapes that contrast with the triangle’s sharp outlines.
Broad strokes of dark blue form the sides of the triangle to give it further emphasis.
Smaller triangle shapes fill the balance of the canvas. The contrasts of undulating next to
straight lines, organic shapes next to geometric shapes, and dark shades next to light tints
illustrate how O’Keeffe translated music into her own unique vision.
4.
What word would
you use to describe
this color scheme?
Large Dark Red Leaves on White
1925, oil on canvas, 32” x 21”, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D. C.
“Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things,” said O’Keeffe in 1922.
Her statement is reflected in this painting.
Here O’Keeffe transformed the ebbs and flows of the leaf’s form into an object for contemplation by virtue of her language of color and shape. Her emphasis here is created by
three factors: the large-scale magnification of the leaf’s shape, its size so exaggerated that
it fills the entire space and is cropped at the edge of the canvas; its placement in the center of the canvas; and its isolation (positive shape) in front of the white background (negative shape). Shades of warm red color create shadows not only to define what appears to
be three leaves stacked together, but also to define the veins of the leaf and give it its threedimensional form. Further emphasis is created by the contrast of the warm reds, which
advance towards the viewer, set against a light blue background.
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How is the leaf’s
three-dimensional
form created?
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Georgia O’Keeffe
5.
Slide List
Red Poppy
1927, oil on canvas, 7-1/8” x 9”, Private collection
For O’Keeffe, the object alone could never substitute for the work of art. Color was her
formal language. When asked to choose whether the flower or the color was her focus,
O’Keeffe refused to say. Instead she spoke of the primacy of aesthetics. “What is my
experience of the flower if not color?” she declared.
In addition to the vibrant red color of this flower, the point-of-view dominates the canvas.
It is as if the viewer is a bee about to land in the center of the bloom. Color contrasts of
dark against light give definition to all areas of the flower’s shape, from the black center
of the bloom to the shape of the bright red petals which are contrasted against the cool
background with its hint of blue. O’Keeffe achieves further emphasis with the scale of the
flower, which fills the entire space and is cropped at the edge of the canvas. O’Keeffe said,
“…I’ve painted it big enough so that others would see what I see.”
Where is the
area of greatest
contrast?
Fun Fact: In 1995, the United States Postal Service honored O’Keeffe by issuing a commemorative first-class postage stamp with this image.
6.
Purple Petunia
1927, oil on canvas, 36” x 30”, Private collection
In this painting, O’Keeffe painted a point-of-view that is ecen closer to the center of the
flower. Because the flower is so large and the edges of its shape are cropped at the side
of the canvas, the painting has become almost an abstract image of shadows and curved
lines. The only thing that helps to maintain the flower’s definition are the dark, barely visible shapes of the stamens and pistil in the convergence of dark lines at the center of the
flower. This area of greatest contrast also creates emphasis and establishes the focal point
of the painting.
Color contrasts help to define the flower, with dark lines of shadows helping to give the
petunia’s ruffled petals their form. The warm purple of the flower provides additional
emphasis through color dominance, since the warm tones of reddish-purple seem to
advance towards the viewer.
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What clues, besides
the painting’s title,
tell you that you
are looking at a
close-up of a flower?
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Georgia O’Keeffe
7.
Slide List
Jack in the Pulpit IV
1930, oil on canvas, 40” x 30”, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.
In 1930, O’Keeffe painted a series of six canvases depicting a jack-in-the-pulpit flower.
Also known as Indian turnip, the flower is a sort of green vase made from a single petallike leaf that extends and gracefully folds over the top of a single stalk growing up from
its center. The flower’s common name, jack-in-the-pulpit, was given because it looks like
a clergyman giving a sermon in his pulpit. O’Keeffe’s series of paintings began with the
striped and hooded bloom rendered with a botanist’s care, and it continued with successively more abstract and tightly focused views until the final painting showed only the
essence of the flower: a haloed black pistil standing alone against a purple, black and gray
field. This painting represents the midpoint of her series and its increasing magnification
and abstraction.
Although the scale of the image on this canvas puts the viewer too close to the bloom to
see the entire flower, O’Keeffe does provide a point-of-view that allows us to see the
curved and curling organic shape of the petal. Contrasts of light and dark cool color not
only separate the petal from the background but also mimic and further emphasize the
petal’s shape in the distance. The interior of the flower is emphasized by the halo of white
surrounding the contrasting darker center. This pointed area of white also contrasts with
the more oval dark shape within it, adding to the emphasis. With these increasingly magnified views of flowers, O’Keeffe intended for the viewer to really “see” and experience
what she saw in nature.
8.
How is emphasis
achieved in this
painting?
Corn Dark I
1924, oil on composition board, 31-3/4” x 11-7/8”, The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York
O’Keeffe created this painting in the summer of 1924 at Lake George, in upstate New
York, where the Stieglitz family maintained a summer home. O’Keeffe enjoyed the outdoor life there, helping to maintain the grounds and tending a garden where she grew corn.
For this painting, she found inspiration in the light-colored veins of the dark green leaves
reaching out in all directions. From this interesting point of view, the viewer is placed
above the plant and looks down to see the leaves of a young corn stalk radiate out from
its center.
Cool green and blue colors define the shapes of the leaves and create their rippling forms.
Darker shades create shadows that further define the center of the corn stalk and emphasize the curl of each individual leaf. The white veins down the center of two leaves are
emphasized by the contrast with the darker green color. The image of the corn leaves is
scaled to fit the entire canvas, with the contrast between the cool greens of the plant and
the warm burgundy color of the barely visible background further emphasizing the image.
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What point of view
is used here?
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Georgia O’Keeffe
9.
Slide List
City Night
1926, oil on canvas, 48” x 30”, location unknown
O’Keeffe’s body of work truly defies classification, but this painting illustrates why she
has, on occasion, been associated with a group of 20th century artists known as the
Precisionists. These artists straddled the boundary between representational art and abstraction by reducing their images to simple geometric forms, as O’Keeffe did in this painting.
In this city scene, the viewer stands at the base of tall buildings and, looking up, sees them
as simple elongated black forms. They are devoid of any details and jut up at an angle into
the sky, their dark shapes contrasting against the cool blue sky to further define their
forms. The blue background is the only color in this otherwise black and white
composition.
Between the black shapes on either side of the painting is another elongated shape, this
one emphasized by the contrast of its whiteness next to the darker shapes. Further contrast is provided by the round shape of the glowing light between the buildings at the bottom of the canvas. O’Keeffe isolated this shape in the area of sky between the tall shapes
and gave it emphasis not only through placement but also by contrasting its shape and
color against the dark background.
10.
Where do you see
shape contrast?
The Lawrence Tree
1929, oil on canvas, 31-1/16” x 39-3/16”, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford,
Connecticut
O’Keeffe painted this image during the first summer she spent in New Mexico. The ponderosa pine tree depicted in this painting grew on a ranch near the Taos home of writer
D. H. Lawrence, whom O’Keeffe frequently visited. As O’Keeffe herself described it, “I
spent several weeks up at the Lawrence ranch…there was a long weathered carpenter’s
bench under the tall tree in front of the little old house that Lawrence lived in there. I often
lay on that bench looking up into the tree—past the trunk and up into the branches. It was
particularly fine at night with the stars above the tree.” Looking at this painting, we can
almost imagine ourselves laying on that bench and looking up through the branches of this
grand tree.
Where would you be
sitting to see the tree
in this way?
O’Keeffe used three simple colors, black, brown and blue, to create the shape of the tree
trunk and dark limbs against the night sky. The areas of black represent the heavy areas
of pine needles at night; in reality, they would only appear as areas of dark shadow. The
brown tree trunk is emphasized by its dominance on the canvas, extending its branches
from the lower right corner to the upper left across the width of the canvas. Its warm color
also makes it appear as if it is advancing towards us. To create the stars in the sky,
O’Keeffe used dabs of white that contrast against the darker background.
Fun Fact: When the Wadsworth Atheneum acquired this painting in 1981, O’Keeffe commented that, “the painting was done so it could be hung with any end up.” The painting is
presently hung at the Atheneum in keeping with the artist’s strong early preference, which
she stated on numerous occasions, instructing that the tree should “stand on its head.”
However, it is curious that all the art books show this painting with the orientation as
presented here.
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Georgia O’Keeffe
11.
Slide List
Ranchos Church I
1929, oil on canvas, 18-1/2” x 24”, Norton Gallery and School of Art,
West Palm Beach, Florida
Beginning in 1929, O’Keeffe began yearly trips to New Mexico during the summer
months. This painting is of the eighteenth century Saint Francis of Assisi Mission (also
called Ranchos Church) located in Taos, New Mexico. O’Keeffe felt that the adobe church
was one of the most beautiful buildings left by the early Spanish settlers of the area. She
decided she had to paint it, and produced a series of eight works depicting the large structure. This painting is one of the first in the series, but it shows only a part of the structure’s
back side. In landscapes as well as in her flower paintings, she said “I often painted fragments of things because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the
whole could.”
How did O’Keeffe
use light and dark
colors to create
the shapes?
This painting emphasizes the church’s bulging, sculptural masses. Its shapes are created
by the contrast of light and dark colors. Darker shades create shadows to further define
the structure’s form. Its size within the canvas fills almost the entire space to give it
emphasis through placement. In addition, O’Keeffe carefully used color to separate the
areas of the building, sky and ground to further emphasize the structure’s harmony with
the surrounding nature and contrasted the warm color of the building and ground with the
cool blue of the sky.
12.
Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses
1931, oil on canvas, 35-3/4” x 24”, The Art Institute of Chicago
In addition to the desolate southwest landscape, the recurring subject of animal bones
(specifically skulls) can be seen in O’Keeffe’s paintings after her first introduction to New
Mexico. These skulls, either alone, with flowers or in a landscape setting, were subjects
that she returned to time and again. She saw in the jagged edges, worn surfaces and pale
colors the essence of the desert, and she had several skulls shipped east so she could continue to paint New Mexico themes while she was back in New York City. The interesting
shapes and textures of bones and their natural play of positive form and negative space
never ceased to inspire her.
In this painting, O’Keeffe creates an interesting, almost bizarre effect by using a skull with
a flower in a monochromatic (composed of primarily one color) composition. The whiteness of the painting is interrupted by a black area through the center of the painting behind
the skull, which draws the viewer’s attention to the skull’s geometric shape and the
flower’s organic shape, this giving both emphasis. Without the contrast of the black area,
the details of both the skull and flower would be lost to the subtleties of the pale palette.
Through the use of white and shadow, O’Keeffe has given equal weight to the contrasting
dry bones and the living flower. Yellow is the only color used (inside the skull’s cavity),
helping to provide additional emphasis through its placement in the center of the canvas
and isolated in a vast area of white.
Revised 12/05
What feature of
the painting draws
your attention to
the skull?
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Georgia O’Keeffe
13.
Slide List
Ram’s Head, White Hollyhock—Hills
1935, oil on canvas, 30” x 32-1/4”, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York
Often in O’Keeffe’s works the expression of one theme contained the seeds of another.
The skull and flower theme in “Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses” was taken one step further in this painting that combines skeletal, floral and and the addition of landscape
images in the same composition. Although all elements are realistically depicted,
O’Keeffe has created an eerie effect by having the skull and flower shapes float in the sky
above the rolling hills. This placement is unexpected and, along with the unusual size of
the skull, creates emphasis within the composition. In addition, the warm colors used in
the skull make it seem to advance, while the cooler color of the sky in the background
seems to recede, making the skull more dominant in the composition. The contrast of the
living flower with the dead animal’s skull provides an interesting juxtaposition that led
many critics to call O’Keeffe’s work surrealistic.
14.
How does color
help to emphasize
the skull?
White Shell with Red
1938, pastel on paper, 21” x 27”, Art Institute of Chicago
To render small objects in unrealistically large scale was O’Keeffe’s way of making us
look at natural objects in new ways. In this painting, O’Keeffe returned to the concept of
scale to give this shell a special power and strength. The shell’s white shape, created by
color, line and shadow, fills almost the entire canvas, and its dominant size gives it
emphasis. The contrast of its light color against the red background also helps add to its
power; the warm color of the background seems to advance towards us, pushing the shell
with it.
Revised 12/05
What effect
does the warm
background
color have?
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Georgia O’Keeffe
15.
Slide List
Cliffs Beyond Abiquiu, Dry Waterfall
1943, oil on canvas, 30” x 16”, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
Spending time in New Mexico revived O’Keeffe. After being only a seasonal visitor for
many years, she finally bought her first piece of property there in 1940. Five years later
she bought an ancient abandoned house near the village of Abiquiu (pronounced
“AB-i-kew”) and began an extensive restoration project that took three years. After
Stieglitz’s death in 1946, she permanently made her home on her New Mexico property.
The hills and rock formations of New Mexico held a special fascination for O’Keeffe. The
cliffs in this painting are rendered using various values of yellow, brown and red color to
create their shapes and give them a three-dimensional appearance. Darker values create
shading and shadows, giving the landscape its depth. Only the occasional desert shrubs,
rendered in dabs of cool green color, interrupt the barren landscape and contrast with the
yellow and brown hills. At the center of the painting is an area where the red color of the
rocks is isolated among the yellow of the surrounding cliffs. The warm red color advances
and its placement at the center gives emphasis to this area of the painting.
Revised 12/05
Where do you
see cool colors
in this painting?
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Georgia O’Keeffe
Hands-on Project
Simplified Watercolor Painting
Goal
Use watercolors to paint a flower, shell or skull from a “bugs-eye” point of view.
Criteria
•
•
•
Fill the paper with just the small part of the object that a bug would see.
Use vibrant colors
Create contrast by using light and dark colors or light tints and dark shades of only one color.
Materials
•
•
•
•
Watercolor paper 11” x 14”
Watercolor brushes and paints
Water containers
Pencils
•
•
•
•
Masking tape
Silk or live flowers, shells, cow skull
Paper towels
White crayon
Preparation
Have the students select an object that they will paint. Ask the students to think about how the object would look if
they were to shrink to the size of a bug and crawl around on the object. Which part of the object would they find
most interesting as the subject of a close-up picture? If they’ve chosen a flower to paint, would it look interesting
to paint only the center of the flower? Or a view of the flower from one of the leaves? If they selected a shell, what
point of view could they select; looking up at the shell from the point of view of the sand?
Next, briefly demonstrate the proper use of the watercolor paints and brushes. Make sure the brushes are well
rinsed both between colors and when they are finished. Replace dirty water so that colors stay pure. Dab brushes
on the paper towels to absorb excess water; do not mash the brushes into the paper towel.
Procedure
1. Begin by taping the edges of the watercolor paper to the desk to hold it in place while you work. (It will also
help to keep the paper from warping as you paint.)
2. With your pencil, lightly sketch your object onto the paper from the point of view you have selected. Translate
the object into simple shapes. Draw the object large enough that part of it is cropped at the edges of the paper.
3. Use the white crayon to draw over the lines of your pencil sketch to outline the shape of your object and
prepare it for painting. Since the short class time does not allow for the paint drying before applying additional
colors, the crayon will help to contain the wet areas of paint and keep them from bleeding into each other.
4. Fill in your crayon outline with watercolor paint. You may use light and dark colors, or you may wish to limit
yourself to shades and tints of one color, as long as it is a vibrant color. Use water to lighten a color (a tint); use
a touch of black to make the color darker (a shade). To avoid colors running into each other, paint one area and
then move to another area not bordered by what you’ve just painted. When the first area is mostly dry, you can
then add paint to an adjacent area. Your painting is finished when all of the paper within the masking tape has
been painted.
5. As the painting dries, remove the masking tape and sign your painting along the bottom edge of the
unpainted area.
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