American born Georgia O’Keeffe is the stand out woman artist of the modern era, well known for her trademark colourful flower paintings. To be honest, I didn’t know much else about her work really. But the exhibition at Tate Modern, the first of its kind in the UK, aims to reveal the full-range of her career. She uses motifs in her paintings, returning to them on various occasions during her career: flowers to mountains, bones and doors, highlighting her quest to produce the Great American painting. Intriguingly, we also see how much her work and life are influenced by contemporary photography.
She was born in Wisconsin in 1887 and studied at the School of Art Institute of Chicago. O’Keeffe was at first inspired by the abstract photography of Paul Strand. She developed a new and original visual language based on this.
She sketches the Palo Duro Canyon (Texas), and a single fern frond in charcoal, quite obsessively, until she has captured its essence, a form which is both human and plant-like. Alfred Stieglitz, an accomplished photographer and gallery owner, was captivated by these sketches. They were displayed in his Gallery 291 in New York to widespread acclaim. This launched O’Keeffe’s career.
Alongside O’Keeffe’s work at the Tate are black and white portraits taken by Stieglizt of his other protégés: painters John Marin, Marsden Hartley and Rebecca Salisbury Strand. Georgia O’Keefe joins his artistic circle in 1918. There’s also a series of portraits of her by Stieglizt.
Her large-scale, abstract flower paintings in shimmering colour are famous for their ‘bodily’ readings, although she denied this interpretation. It’s likely that this was Stieglitz’s idea and inspired by his abstract nude photographs, in a (successful) bid to boost sales of her paintings.
She takes a more representational approach in response to the ensuing controversy. We see her paintings of cloud formations, of the New York skyline, and her pictures of Lake George in upstate New York which zing with colour. Stieglitz’s ‘equivalent’ black and white photographs, her source material, are positioned nearby. These are quite quaint, capturing the atmosphere of an era. But they’re rather dimly lit. As such, they offset the vivid colours (in oil paint) of O’Keefe’s work, such as 'Oak Leaves, in Pink and Grey' (1929).
It’s clear that she was able to see the potential in photography, which was a growing art form back then. 'New York Street with Moon' (1925) echoes the asymmetric perspective of Stieglitz’s photograph of New York scryscrapers (an urban canyon), displayed on the wall opposite.
Room 6 is a highlight. It’s devoted to more flowers. Here O’Keeffe’s aim is to ‘paint big’ (on a large scale) and with photorealistic accuracy, rendering every single detail. In 'White Iris' (1930) we see blemishes of colour in pink, green and yellow which might normally go unnoticed. The effect is evocative, transcendental and uplifting.
The rest of the exhibition records her time in the desert of New Mexico in South Western America. O’Keeffe was invited to visit an artistic community hosted by art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan in the town of Taos.
O’Keeffe was introduced to modernist photographer Ansel Adams during her first visit in 1929. A selection of his black and white, abstract photographs of Taos are on display, a portrait of a Native American ('A Man of Taos' c1930) and several pictures of the Taos Pueblos Church. She produces an equivalent Ranchos church painting, and paints the landscape of New Mexico, Taos Mountains and the Adobe architecture. Her pictures are stylised and simple. A baked clay brown foreground against a hot sky.
1. Ranchos Church, New Mexico Georgia O'Keeffe 1930-31
O’Keeffe was spellbound by bright light of Santé Fe, New Mexico and its sense of vastness and emptiness compared to busy, urban New York City. The landscape was largely desolate aside from a few scattered communities of Native Americans. She refers to its Spanish Colonial History in ‘Black Cross with Stars and Blue’ (1929).
She went further into the desert, exploring the more remote corners of the region. Her pioneering expeditions remind me of another intrepid artist, Norwegian Peder Balke. Both painters set out to depict (opposite) extreme environments. They both have an eye for the uncanny and atypical. Peder Balke painted icebergs and lighthouses. O’Keeffe paints bones.
Animal skulls are what she found in the arid environment, in the absence of flowers or trees. The bone pictures are a rather wry take on producing ‘the Great American Painting’. They challenge the attempts by New York based artists, who probably hadn’t venture beyond the Hudson River, aspiring to paint like the European Masters. O’Keeffe paints these bones as if they are flowers. I suppose they have some symbolic value. But I’m not totally convinced by the eerie end result.
In ‘Black Place III’(1945) she records, on the way to the Navajo Country, a series of rolling, folding hills in their rather abstract formation. She says of the ‘Black Place’ ‘...as you come to it over a hill, it looks like a mile of elephants, grey hills all about the same size.’ She also had a way with words.
In 1940 she purchased a property in New Mexico called Ghost Ranch, depicting the view from her house, including Cerro Pedernal Mountain. She said that Pedernal was ‘her mountain’. Her semi-abstract paintings of ‘Chama River’ (1937) and ‘My Front Yard', Summer (1941) reveal an emotional connection to a place. We’re invited to share in her sense of wonder. The pictures reach out to us. This is a recurring theme in her work, evident in her early pictures of the Palo Duro Canyon to the paintings of Cottonwood Trees growing around her second property in New Mexico, in Abiquiú. It may well explain the enduring popularity of her work.
There are more portraits of O’Keeffe by Ansel Adams, when she later made New Mexico her permanent home. Her hair is tied back under a wide brimmed hat that protects her from the sun, and she’s wearing a simple shirt and a long skirt. Her appearance has changed. She looks part of the environment. A ‘desert spirit’. Today the parched landscape of New Mexico, where she once painted, is now known as ‘O’Keeffe Country’; a gift to the local tourist board.
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1. Georgia O’Keeffe 1887-1986 Ranchos Church, New Mexico 1930-1 Oil paint on canvas 622 x 914 mm Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas © 2016 Georgia O'Keeffe Museum/DACS, London