Georgia O'Keeffe was a pioneering American artist known for her unique abstract style. She broke barriers by painting in New York City in the 1920s when women artists were still seen as outsiders. O'Keeffe developed a style of abstracting objects and landscapes into vivid colors and shapes to express feelings and ideas that were hard to convey with words alone. Throughout her life and career, O'Keeffe demonstrated courage and independence by rejecting what others taught her and developing her own singular artistic vision according to her own thinking.

1. Georgia O’Keeffe
A Pioneer in American Art

2. Notes of the Author
The following presentation is part of a bigger contribution on Georgia
O’Keeffe and her democratic approach to Art in America.
The presentation here misses all the bibliographical references which are
instead listed in the related article, REDRAWING THE OUTLINES OF AMERICAN
DEMOCRACY IN GEORGIA O’KEEFFE’S ART AND WORLD.
Cristiana Pagliarusco

3. ‘To create one's own world, in any of the arts, takes courage’.
1887-1986

4. Alexis de Tocqueville
‘Life is to be entered upon with courage’

5. ‘I was the sort of child that ate around the raisin on the cookies and
ate around the hole in the doughnut saving either the raisin or the hole
for the last and best’

6. Georgia O’Keeffe
1915
‘I decided to start anew – to strip away what I had been taught – to accept as
true my own thinking. This was one of my best times of my life. […] I was
alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown – no one to satisfy
but myself.’

7. Georgia O’Keeffe
‘One day seven years ago I found myself saying to myself - I can't live where I want to - I
can't go where I want to go - I can't do what I want to - I can't even say what I want to... I
decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.’ (1914 to her
husband-to-be Alfred Stieglitz)

8. Walt Whitman
Song of the Open Road
[…]
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
[…]

9. Walt Whitman
Song of the Open Road
[…]
Have the past struggles succeeded?
What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?
Now understand me well—it is provided in the essence of things that from any
fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a
greater struggle necessary. […]

10. Toni Morrison
‘I'm not entangled in shaping my work according to other people's views of
how I should have done it.’

11. ‘I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other
way – things I had no words for.’
‘

12. 1919-1926
‘I had never lived up so high before and was so excited that I began talking
about trying to paint New York. Of course, I was told it was an impossible idea
– even the men hadn’t done too well with it . […] The next year Stieglitz had a
small corner room at the Andreson Galleries. There were three large windows.
As you entered you saw my first New York between two windows.
[…] My large New York was sold the first afternoon.’

13. An ‘outsider’ in the early 1920s
• ‘It was in the time when men didn’t think much of what I was doing. They
were all discussing Cézanne…’

14. Radiator Building

15. The inward eye

16. Georgia O’Keeffe to
Eleanor Roosevelt
See the letter

17. Toni Morrison
‘Women's rights is not only an abstraction, a cause; it is also a personal affair. It
is not only about us; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.’

18. relationships
• O’Keeffe’s letters can be seen as her research for correspondences, between
color (SHE) and lines (HER INTERLOCUTORS)
• HER OBJECTS/SUBJECTS DEVELOPED INTO ABSTRACTIONS

20. ‘HER ONENESS WITH HERSELF’
Juan Hamilton

21. Georgia O’Keeffe
Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I
have done with where I have been that should be of interest.

22. Toni Morrison
‘Somebody has to take responsibility for being a leader.’

23. Georgia O’Keeffe
‘I am particularly amused and pleased that my tap of emotions was closed… it
ia wonderful: all those women who appreciate my works will have the
feeling to be intellectual. It is indeed magnificient, and the men will repute
them even more harmless if my method is the French one (in reference to the
definition given by McBride about the fact the painter would plan the work in
her mind before starting it up).

24. Samples of Letters for Reference
• Lula Mae Blocton
• Winona Woods
• Anita Wood
Available at the Beinecke Library Digital Archive
http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Search/Results?lookfor=okeeffe&limit=10&sort=relevance