Georgia O'Keeffe was an American artist known for her paintings of flowers, landscapes, and cityscapes. She pioneered abstract painting in the early 20th century, creating non-representational works using only shapes, colors, and forms as early as 1915. Her early abstract paintings were prominently displayed by her husband Arthur Stieglitz at his 291 gallery, exposing the American public to this new style of art. O'Keeffe was influenced by Arthur Wesley Dow's principles of composition and abstraction, and she credited Arthur Dove as having the most significant impact on her development as a young artist moving her style towards abstraction.

1. Georgia O’Keeffe – her life and work
Dave Shafer
1887-1986
99
years

2. Georgia lived to be 99 and up until the
very end she was a strong and vigorous
free spirit, independent and adventurous.

3. Georgia O’Keeffe was and is a very beloved
American artist, mostly because of her
gorgeous flower paintings but also as an icon
to feminists. She had a very strong
independent personality and lived life very
successfully on her own terms.
As a result there are endless books about
her, reproductions of her work, interviews
about her and with her, and some very
excellent videos - both short and long – that
you can see on Youtube.
My presentation today (as well as my
Stieglitz talk) will try to focus on some
aspects of her life and work that are often
neglected and which give a better view of
her personality and her importance to art.

4. Georgia at 6 years old
Georgia (1887- 1986) was born in Wisconsin to
a family of dairy farmers in 1897, one of 7
children. Her two sisters made with her a trio of
interesting personalities and Ida became an
artist as well as Georgia, but was always in the
shadow of her sister’s very great fame.
When Georgia was
10 she decided she
wanted to be an artist

5. The Wisconsin farm was spread over
1700 acres of land on which they raised
cattle, horses and grew crops. Farm life
can be very isolating and the nearest
neighbor may be a long distance away.
No playing in the street after school as
city kids might do.
During cold Wisconsin winters there
was little to do outside. This isolated
environment affected Georgia and
she had sort of a hermit-like slant to
her throughout her very long life.

6. Georgia’s mother took her and her sisters to
drawing lessons in a nearby town and she loved it.

7. Ida, Georgia, Anita
Ida and Georgia. Ida also became an artist.

8. Ida O’Keeffe in 1924,
age 35

9. 1926
1939
Ida’s art is flat and very
static. None of the
exuberant energy and
life in Georgia’s art.
Banana
leaves
1939

10. Ida did a series on a
lighthouse theme.
Georgia later discovered that Alfred Stieglitz, her husband,
was writing flirtatious letters to her sister Ida. He describes
himself as a crow feather eager to pierce a plump red apple.
He also took many photos of Ida.

11. In 1916 Anita O’Keeffe
married Robert Young, who
became a very successful
businessman and then a top
railroad executive and she
became very active in
philanthropy. She was also
close friends with the Duke
and Duchess of Windsor.
These three O’Keeffe sisters
did pretty well for a dairy
farmer’s daughters.

12. 1906 O’Keeffe family – brothers and sisters
The three sisters in the mid 1980s

13. Teachers College, Columbia University, NYC
Art Students League
of New York
Art Institute of Chicago,
was the first stop for
Georgia after high school
Georgia also took
courses at both places At the Art Institute she had the opportunity to study with
John Vanderpool, whom she later felt was one of the few true
teachers she had ever known. O’Keeffe also had to take a
course in anatomy, painting nude subjects–a prospect that was
emotionally difficult for her at first. She had a strong emotional
reaction upon seeing her first male nude, but eventually she
became accustomed to them despite the lasting impression this
first experience made on her.

14. One of her teachers was
William Merritt Chase, a very
prominent American artist. He represented the apex
of the establishment

15. Georgia won a contest in 1908
at the New York Art Students
League with this painting of a
dead rabbit and a copper pot,
using the painting style she had
been taught. But then she came
to believe that she would never
distinguish herself as a painter
within the tradition of imitative
realism, so she abandoned her
commitment to being a painter
altogether and took a job in
Chicago as a commercial artist.
Later she returned to her goal
to become an artist based on
an inspiring teacher she met.

16. Columbia College in South Carolina, in 1940s. Founded in 1854, it is one of the
oldest women's colleges in the United States. Georgia took a teaching position
there for a while. Let us now look at what was going in in Europe, where artists
were just on the verge of trying pure abstraction. Georgia made an early
breakthrough in that as a young woman and greatly advanced American art.

17. Back then
America
was a
cultural
backwater
and it was
just about
to be
woken up
to exciting
new trends
in art in
Paris.

18. Georgia was being
trained in the classical ways
of portraying reality, as in
her portrait here of a
woman at an easel. There
were many contemporary
trends in Europe of
exploring new styles of
painting, such as
expressionism, post
expressionism, pointillism,
cubism, etc. And with very
few exceptions they did not
abandon the idea of there
being a subject in the
painting – a person, a
landscape, a still life, etc.
That is generally called
figurative painting.
This 1905 Matisse portrait of his
wife may have an explosion of
colors, even on her face, but the
painting does have a definite
subject – her. It is not abstract art.

19. Giacomo Balla, “Dynamism
of a Dog on a Leash”, 1912
Umberto Boccioni, “Unique Forms
of Continuity in Space”, 1913
The Italian
Futurists
were
trying to
show
motion in
paintings
and
sculptures

20. One uncomprehending art critic
described “Nude Descending a
Staircase (No. 2)” as “the explosion of
a shingle factory.”
Yet it is not abstract art – you can see
the figure descending the staircase
Marcel Duchamp’s 1912 painting shocked
and disturbed American viewers, who were
used to classical styles of art. America at
that time was sort of a provincial back-
water place far from the exciting currents
of contemporary European art.

21. Gabriele Munter in
Germany was
experimenting with
very simplified
compositions with
bold blocks of
strong colors and
almost no detail, like
this 1908 painting.

22. In 1909 Picasso was experimenting
with early forms of cubism and also
distorted and/or multiple perspective
planes, like in this “Woman with Pears”
All of these very diverse new and exciting
rethinkings of what art could be – not just
the classical attempts to accurately mimic
real or imagined reality – had one thing in
common. They all were paintings about
something – a person, a landscape, a still
life, etc. They were not abstract art.

23. Piet Mondrian 1921
Later, after abstract art had been
thoroughly accepted as a legitimate
style of art, critics and historians
started to wonder who was the first
artist to take the leap and produce
a completely abstract work, which
did not represent anything, and
when did that happen? Everyone
knew that it happened sometime in
the general time period of 1909 to
1911 but there were many
competing choices for the first
abstract painting. Kandinsky
claimed that he was the one, in
1911.

24. Kandinsky “Beach scene” 1909
This is clearly figurative art, not abstract, but it is
moving towards being just blocks and shapes of color
Kandinsky 1911
thought for a long time
to be probably the first
truly abstract art

25. 1913
1911
Until Hilma Klint was
“discovered” these early
Kandinsky paintings were
considered among the
earliest abstract art.

26. Max Ernst 1909 “Landscape with sun” Max Ernst 1909 “Untitled”
But what about this
here? If the 1909
painting on the left did
not have its title it might
lay claim to be abstract.
And if the 1909 one on
the right were given a
certain title it might be
possible to say that it is
not abstract, but instead
represents some scene
from nature. So clearly it
is not so easy to decide
what is abstract and what
is not. Intention seems
to matter.

27. Hilma Klint 1862-1944
In 1986 an artistic
bombshell hit when
the mostly unknown
private and secretive
paintings of Swedish
artist Hilma Klint
were shown to the
public. She was
doing abstract art as
early as 1905-1906
and deserves the
title of the first
abstract artist.
1907

28. Hilma Klint, a Swedish painter – gets full credit for inventing abstract art, but had no
influence because she was completely unknown her whole life in that way. She painted
the first known abstract art in 1906, 5 years before Kandinsky. She kept her abstract art
private. To the public she exhibited classical works like this 1903 landscape. Women’s
contributions to art were/are usually minimalized in art history.

29. Hilma Klint – painted 1906-1907
Her art was mostly colorful decorative abstract images

30. Now let us look at the
important place that
Georgia O’Keeffe had in
this evolution of abstract
art. At Arthur Stieglitz’s
popular 291 studio here
her abstract art was
immediately put out in
front of the general
public and heavily
promoted by Stieglitz.
By contrast it is hard to
determine if any of
these very early abstract
European works by
Kandinsky, Klint, and
others were seen by
anyone until somewhat
later, and if so, when?
Starting with charcoal sketches in 1915
O’Keeffe marked out her own abstract art path.

31. Georgia studied art during the summers between
1912 and 1914 and was introduced to the very
revolutionary and influential principles and
philosophies of Arthur Wesley Dow, who espoused
creating works of art based upon personal style,
design, and interpretation of subjects, rather than
trying to copy or represent them. This caused a major
change in the way she felt about and approached art,
as seen in the beginning stages of her watercolors from
her studies at the University of Virginia and more
dramatically in the charcoal drawings that she
produced in 1915 that led to total abstraction. Alfred
Stieglitz, an art dealer and photographer, held an
exhibit of her works in 1916. Over the next couple of
years, she taught and continued her studies at the
Teachers College, Columbia University.

32. Dow had studied art in Paris and other places and had seen Japanese
woodcuts with their greatly pared down detail, which can tend towards
abstraction. Due to Dow’s influence Georgia’s early art became almost purely
abstract. Here are two examples of Dow’s work. Very appealing.

33. Dow
managed to
imbue nearly
abstract art
with feeling,
sort of like
Edvard
Munch did.

34. Dow
Munch

35. This Dow
haystack is
nearly an
abstract
image.

36. Georgia
absorbed the
idea in Dow’s
art of regions
of color with
little detail, as
in his work
here.

37. A Dow
landscape
with simple
“less is more”
composition.

38. Summer school
art students at
Arthur Wesley
Dow’s classes
in Ipswich,
Massachusetts.
Almost all
women.

39. Dow’s use of blocks of
color and simple shapes,
like in this painting and
in this book cover
influenced Georgia in
her artistic evolution.
He became the head of
the Japanese art section
at the Boston Museum
of Fine Arts.

40. Dow’s theories
of the best
composition
practices were
laid out in
several tutorial
books.

41. “Canyon with crows”
1917
O’Keeffe mastered
Dow’s ideas and put
them in service of
her own unique and
highly creative
style.

42. “Evening Star”
1916

43. “Roof with Snow”
1917

44. Storm
A Storm 1922

45. In addition to photography
Stieglitz’s 291 gallery also
displayed the very avant-garde
paintings by Matisse, Cezanne,
and others and exposed
Americans to this radical new
type of art.
Georgia was very receptive to
new ideas and saw the exciting
possibilities that these new art
styles might mean for her.
Matisse 1908

46. Sunrise 1916
University of Virginia, 1912
when Georgia was 25
Georgia quickly moved from representational art towards abstraction

47. “Train at Night in the
Desert” 1916
1919
“Blue line”

48. 1916-1917
“Inside Red Canna” 1919
If it had no
title the
picture at
right would
then become
abstract art

49. Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) is most famous for her
sinuous figurative depictions of flowers and the
American southwest, yet she credited abstractionist
Arthur Dove (1880–1946) (different from her academic
teacher Arthur Dow, who we discussed earlier) as the
individual who had the most significant impact on her
development as a young artist. As she later reflected,
“The way you see nature depends on whatever has
influenced your way of seeing…I think it was Arthur
Dove who affected my start, who helped me to find
something of my own.”
After seeing O’Keeffe’s watercolors at Gallery 291,
Dove wrote to Stieglitz, “This girl…is doing what we
fellows are trying to do. I’d rather have one of her
watercolors than anything I know.”
Georgia O’Keeffe
“Blue #1” 1917

50. Arthur Dove and his amazing
“Fog Horns” from 1929

51. You can do whatever you want during our 10 minute break. If you
want something interesting to watch here is another 10 minute painting.

52. Arthur Dove –
“Abstraction” 1910
is considered the first
abstract art painted in
America. Dove had
been living in Paris
before this and had
seen art by others
experimenting with
abstraction.
Here he lived on two
farms in Westport and
raised chickens to
support his family.

53. Arthur Dove, “Sunrise”, 1924 O’Keeffe “Sunrise” 1916
O’Keeffe was initially very
influenced by Arthur Dove but then
eventually ended up influencing him.

54. 1916
Georgia had
developed a
completely
original style,
nothing like her
contemporaries.

55. 1919
1917
“Evening
star”
Georgia combined early abstract art
with early flower paintings where the
flower was just a jumping off point for
experiments with colors and shapes .

57. 1919 “Red and Orange
Streak” by O”Keeffe
An amazingly
bold jump
into pure
abstract art.
1918

58. 1918 “Blue Flower” 1918 “Music, Pink and Blue #2”
O’Keeffe said, “I
found I could say
things with color
and shapes that I
couldn't say any
other way -
things I had no
words for. I had
to create an
equivalent for
what I felt about
what I was
looking at - not
copy it.”

59. “Green Lines
and Pink”
1919
1916

60. “Lake
George”
1922
Georgia later did
many landscapes
out West with
very simplified
composition

61. “Lake George reflection” 1921-1922
The first time it was exhibited it was mistakenly hung vertically.

62. “Lake
George,
night
reflection”
1922

63. “My Shanty,
Lake George”
1922
Which she
made into
her art studio

64. “Plums”
1920

65. “Apple Family”
1920
O’Keeffe often
moved back and forth
between completely
figurative art like this
painting, and almost
completely abstract
art like the Lake
George reflections
paintings.

66. 1925 “Street light
with moon”
1926 “City Night”
Georgia did 20
paintings of New
York, almost all at
night. She found the
city too gritty during
the day to be, for her,
aesthetically pleasing

67. 1927
“Light of Iris”
1924
In addition to
doing paintings of
the city at night
she also produced
gorgeous flower
pictures.

68. 1923

69. Georgia said that
people are usually
in too much of a
rush to truly see
flowers in all their
detail and beauty,
especially the
small details. So
she decided to
paint very large
size flower images
so even people in a
rush could not
ignore the details.

70. I have done a lot of extreme close-up photography of flower blossoms, like the tiny
African violet on the left and the poppy on the right, and you can then see lots of
interesting detail that is usually too tiny to notice. Georgia was doing that with her
flower paintings – showing a new way to see flowers.

71. “Pink moon
over water”
1924

72. “Spring”
1923-
1924
“Petunia #2” 1924

73. The New Britain
Museum of
American Art,
near Hartford,
had a wonderful
exhibit in 2019 of
Georgia O’Keeffe.
I saw it and I wish
I could see it
again now that I
have learned
much more about
her.

74. 1926 Pink tulip 1924 Petunia

75. “Oriental Poppies” 1927
You can see that
by focusing on
extreme closeups
of flowers she was
able to combined
abstract elements
of shape with
accurate figurative
rendering of detail.
Georgia did a
group of paintings
at Lake George in
the early to late
1920s.

76. “East River”
1928
You would never
guess that this is
also Georgia
O’Keeffe, who
had several
painting styles
that she had
mastered.

77. “Abstraction, White Roses” 1927
“Red, Yellow,
and Black
Streak” 1924

78. “Jack-in-the-Pupil” 1930 “From the Lake #1” 1924
Georgia’s titles
are often the
only way to
know if these
abstract
images are
based on
anything real

79. “Red Poppy”
1927

80. “Black Hollyhock
Blue Larkspur”
1930
1929
“Oak Leaves”

81. “Grey, Blue & Black
– Pink Circle”
1929

82. Georgia always
rejected the very
common
characterization
of many of her
flower pictures as
being overtly
sexual. But
still…..

83. To paraphrase
Freud, sometimes
a flower is just a
flower.
And sometimes
not.

84. From Nature’s point of view
flowers are about one thing and
only that thing – sex. It is how
plants reproduce.
A flower’s sexual apparatus is
only visible in detail when you
get very close up to the blossom,
which is exactly what Georgia
does with her paintings.
Perhaps Georgia O’Keeffe is
being more than a little
disingenuous about all of this.

85. From 1916 to his death in 1946, Stieglitz
worked assiduously and effectively to promote
O’Keeffe and her art. He was alone among his
peers in the 1910s in maintaining that American
art could equal European art and in asserting
that women could create art equal to that
produced by men. However, he equated the
creative process with sexual energies, and from
the beginning he defined O’Keeffe’s work
primarily in terms of gender, declaring her
imagery the visual manifestation of a sexually
liberated woman. In 1921 he provided visual
equivalents for his ideas by exhibiting a large
number of photographs he had made of
O’Keeffe. Many presented her in the nude or in
various stages of undress.
However, Georgia had good reasons to reject sexual interpretations of her art. Early in her career
Stieglitz, her future husband, heavily promoted her to the public in a certain way that she spent years
trying to overcome.

86. Georgia resented the way in her early career many art
critics saw her as mainly being the creative muse of her
husband Alfred Stieglitz and not an equally important artist
in her own right. Yet she was in fact that muse to him, but
very much more than that.
She also resented being typecast as a woman doing
“feminine art”. Yet she said “I feel there is something
unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore.”
Here is her handwriting
on a letter to her
husband. If you had to
guess you would most
probably say a woman
had written it. But she
never painted women or
men and her art is
universal in its appeal.

87. Sold in 2014 for $44 million
“Petunias” 1925
“Corn III”
1924

88. The pastels
that we often
associate
with O’Keeffe
have some
very dark
counterparts
which can
express
strong
feelings of
danger and
gloom, as the
next slide
shows.

90. Amazing night view of
the shore with a distant
light on the horizon.
Quite spooky!

91. Georgia’s long
and complicated
marriage to
Alfred Stieglitz
has been covered
in my separate
talk on Stieglitz
and will not be
discussed here.

92. 1935
O’Keeffe took the first of
many trips to New Mexico in
1929 and instantly fell in love
with the spare dry terrain and
muted desert colors. She
continued to paint flowers
and some abstract work as
well as desert landscapes.
Later on she moved there
permanently when her
husband Alfred Stieglitz died.
Before that she would spend
half time with him in New
York and half out west.

93. 1929 in New
Mexico
Georgia said -
“There was a long weathered
carpenter's bench under the
tall tree in front of the little
old house that D.H. Lawrence
had 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."
This is often incorrectly shown
upside down from this view here.

94. 1936
Some art critics
thought that her
flowers pictures
(which were making
her quite rich) had
become too
repetitive. She also
found that her spare
and often austere
New Mexico paintings
did not resonate as
well with the public as
her very lush flower
pictures. But George
basically painted for
herself.

95. Many of the
Western
landscapes she
painted had a
rugged beauty
quite different
from the
graceful curves
of her flower
paintings. And
of course the
scale was
completely
different –
mountain
ranges and
vistas instead
of flowers.

96. 1928 Model A Ford
Georgia learned how
to drive and bought a
Ford Model A to
explore the Southwest.

97. “Black
Cross with
Red Sky”
1929
“Black
Cross with
stars and
blue”
1929

98. “Ranchos Church” 1930
Home in Abuquiu

99. Not something I would
want on my wall.

100. “Nature Forms” 1932
The color range of these Western paintings
was very muted compared to the vivid and
lush flower colors of her earlier art.

101. In 1939 she went to Hawaii for 3 months
and felt revitalized by all the new colors
and sights.

102. In 1946 Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia’s mentor, husband, and soul mate died at age 82. She was 59
and then lived another 40 years until she died in 1986 at age 99. During those 40 years without
him she lived in New Mexico, mostly by herself. She did hire a young woman to help with
cooking, domestic chores and planning some revisions to the large abode house Georgia was
living in. Georgia painted, handled the sale of her work and dealt with dealers and museums.

103. O’Keeffe
trees

104. “Cottonwood III”
1944

105. “From the Plains” 1954
Towards the
end of her
very long
career Georgia
returned more
and more to
the very
abstract art
that she had
pioneered
when she was
young.

106. Pure abstract art “Blue, Black, and Grey” 1960

107. Jackson
Pollock
Hans
Hofmann
Abstract Expressionism
held sway in the 1950s and
O’Keeffe’s style of art was no
longer as popular. But she
basically painted for herself

108. Georgia O’Keeffe had become an
American icon. Here in 1968 she was
on the cover of LIFE magazine at age
81. She lived as a recluse in a remote
area of New Mexico and did not seek
visitors, especially the many tourists
who hoped to meet this famous
person. Later her house there, after
she died, became a mecca for many
kinds of tourists – art lovers,
feminists, and those who just admired
her strong independent spirit.

109. “The Beyond”
1972
Her last
unassisted oil
painting. Her
vision was failing
and that ended
her ability to
paint without
some help.

110. 1976 autobiography –
a best seller
A cookbook

111. “A Blackbird with snow
covered red hills”, 1976
She could not have
painted this at this date,
when she was 89,
without some assistance,
because of her macular
degeneration problems.
It is not clear what this
assistance consisted of.

112. “Men like to
put me down as
the best woman
painter. I think I
am one of the
best painters.”

113. 1887-1986
Georgia was 16 when the Wright Brothers made their first flight in
1903, 21 went the first Model T Ford came out, and here she is hanging
out with Andy Warhol, who died one year after her.
Georgia O’Keeffe
Her very long life span
kept her and her works
in the public’s eye and
imagination for
generations.

114. It is not clear exactly what this very
close relationship here consisted of. She
was 58 years older than him. They were
living together for 13 years and there
were rumors. She left him everything in
her will. They met when he was 27 and
she was 85 and began living in the same
house soon after. He started out as her
handyman. Hamilton became O’Keeffe’s
driver, gardener, assistant, secretary,
travel companion, and closest friend. He
was a potter with two years of grad school
but unemployed. He taught her pottery
and she enjoyed doing this new, to her, art
form. She had never had a child but very
much had wanted one. Maybe that was
all this was.
He eventually married someone and he,
she, and their two sons all lived together
with Georgia, as one happy family.
Georgia O’Keeffe and Juan Hamilton

115. First 3 minutes

116. When Georgia died she left him almost everything in her will– her estate was worth about $70 million (in
today’s dollars about $180 million). Most of that value was her paintings which she had never sold or had
bought back later after selling them. Her relatives had long been suspicious of Hamilton and freaked out when
the will was read. They sued. And here you find out who Juan Hamilton really was. He wanted to advance in
his artistic career as a potter and he knew that a long, distracting, and time consuming legal battle would result
from the suits against him. So he simply freely gave almost all of that large fortune to the relatives and kept a
rather small amount for himself. How often do you hear that kind of story?

118. 5:45

119. Near the end of
her life Georgia
was frail and her
vision was failing.
Juan was her
support
physically and
emotionally.

120. In her lifelong quest to communicate feeling,
O’Keeffe innovated many important aesthetic
investigations. She demonstrated an interest in all-
over abstract compositions, placing equal
importance on all areas of the picture plane, long
before Clement Greenburg attributed that
accomplishment to the Abstract Expressionists.
She focused on the flatness of the picture plane
long before it was a concern for Post-Painterly
Abstractionists. She was interested in the
transcendent powers of abstract fields of color
long before the Color Field artists explored similar
interests. And decades before Post-Modernist
relativism insinuated itself into fine art, O’Keeffe
intuitively grasped the idea that all styles, all
approaches, all techniques and all variations
within aesthetics are equal in their potential value,
and ultimately secondary to the primacy of honest
self-expression.

121. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum is in Santa Fe, New Mexico