Georgia O'Keeffe: Education and the Blossoming of an Artistic Vision
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) stands as a pivotal figure in American Modernism, celebrated for her innovative fusion of abstraction and representation. Her career, spanning seven decades, showcases a unique artistic vision that remained largely independent of major art movements. From her iconic flower paintings to her stark depictions of the New Mexico landscape, O'Keeffe created a body of work that continues to resonate with audiences today. This article explores O'Keeffe's education and artistic development, tracing the influences and experiences that shaped her distinctive style.
Early Life and Education: Seeds of Artistic Ambition
Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe's connection to the natural world began early. Growing up on a farm, she explored the outdoors, fostering a deep love for nature that would later permeate her art. At the age of ten, she had decided to become an artist. With her sisters, Ida and Anita, she received art instruction from local watercolorist Sara Mann. The O'Keeffes moved from Wisconsin to Williamsburg, Virginia, where O'Keeffe completed high school as a boarder at Chatham Episcopal Institute in Virginia, graduating in 1905.
Formal Training: Honing Skills and Embracing Modernism
O'Keeffe pursued formal art training, first at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1905. There, she studied with John Vanderpoel and ranked at the top of her class. In 1907, she enrolled at the Art Students League in New York City, attending classes with F. Luis Mora, Kenyon Cox, and William Merritt Chase. Her 1908 painting Dead Rabbit with Copper Pot earned her a scholarship to study at the League’s summer school at Lake George.
While in New York City, O'Keeffe visited galleries, such as 291, co-owned by her future husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz.
The Influence of Arthur Wesley Dow: A Shift Towards Abstraction
A pivotal moment in O'Keeffe's artistic development came with her exposure to the ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow. She took a summer art class in 1912 at the University of Virginia from Alon Bement, who was a Columbia University Teachers College faculty member. Under Bement, she learned of the innovative ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow, Bement's colleague. Dow advocated simplifying forms to capture their essence and developing a personal style, drawing inspiration from principles of design and composition in Japanese art. O'Keeffe's practice transformed in 1912 when she learned of Arthur Wesley Dow's artistic principles of abstract design and compositional harmony. Soon, she studied with Dow at the Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City (1914-15), creating rhythmic abstractions like Special No. 32.
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In 1915, following her time with Dow, O’Keeffe destroyed all of her previous work. This act symbolized a clean break from traditional artistic conventions and a commitment to forging her own path. This marked a significant shift towards abstraction in her work.
Teaching and Early Experimentation: Finding a Visual Language
From 1912 to 1918, she taught art in South Carolina and Texas; her summer vacations included travel and a first visit to New Mexico in 1917. Teaching stints in Texas and South Carolina gave O'Keeffe valuable distance from the New York City art world to develop her own visual language. She reflected, "After careful thinking I decided that I wasn't going to spend my life doing what had already been done." 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.
During this period, O'Keeffe created a series of abstract charcoal drawings that were nothing like she had ever done. These drawings were representative of ideas garnered from her walks through the landscape of the college, and were later shown in a major art gallery in New York. She 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. III.
New York and Alfred Stieglitz: Recognition and Controversy
In 1916 Alfred Stieglitz exhibited her work and began his life-long dedication to and sponsorship of her art. By 1918, O'Keeffe committed to her art full-time, living in Manhattan with Stieglitz, whom she married in 1924. In 1918, O’Keeffe moved to New York at the behest of influential photographer and art dealer, Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz gave O’Keeffe her first exhibition, and their professional relationship evolved into a personal one. O'Keeffe came to know the many early American modernists who were part of Stieglitz's circle of artists, including painters Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and photographers Paul Strand and Edward Steichen. Strand's photography, as well as that of Stieglitz, inspired O'Keeffe's work.
Stieglitz’s sensuous photographs of O’Keeffe contributed to her persistent reputation as a painter of women’s sexuality, despite her vehement rejection of any such interpretations. Also in 1922, journalist Paul Rosenfeld commented "[the] Essence 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.
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In the 1920s, color became "a significant language to me," employed to evoke the flowers and vistas of Stieglitz's Lake George family property--paintings that would garner her widespread acclaim. During this period, her work was often discussed in gendered terms, a reading promoted by Stieglitz and pointedly resisted by O'Keeffe. In turn, she pursued greater precision in magnified flowers, like Yellow Calla, and modern cityscapes, like Manhattan. 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. 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, The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y.
New Mexico: Finding Inspiration in the Desert Landscape
Increasingly disaffected by New York, O'Keeffe first traveled to Taos, New Mexico, in 1929, becoming enthralled by the region's landscape and Native American and Hispanic art. By 1929, she traveled to Santa Fe for the first time, accompanied by her friend Rebecca (Beck) Strand and stayed in Taos 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 in Hartford, Connecticut. O'Keeffe visited and painted the nearby historical San Francisco de Asís Mission Church at Ranchos de Taos. 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.
The dry, bright open spaces appealed to her immensely. 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 …" In 1933 and 1934, O'Keeffe recuperated in Bermuda and returned to New Mexico. 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, White Hollyhock-Hills and Deer's Head with Pedernal.
She began spending months at a time in New Mexico, telling friends in New York that “I never feel at home in the East the way I do out here . . . I feel like myself---and I like it.” After Stieglitz died, O’Keeffe settled in New Mexico and created haunting images of sun-bleached bones, clouds, and mesas. O'Keeffe lived and worked in New Mexico during most summers, and in 1949, following Stieglitz's death, she permanently moved to Abiquiú. She continued to paint there until her death at 98.
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