Georgia O’Keeffe’s Flower Work as Her Self-Portrait

The career of Georgia O’Keeffe was diverse and long-lasting, undoubtedly, the subject matter that she will always be most regarded for will be flowers. Her flowers solidified her as one of the most prolific female voices of the American art world. (Georgia O’Keeffe) Floral still life paintings had previously been viewed as a conventional subject matter that was used to display an artist’s technical expertise – they did not push any expressive boundaries. (Georgia O’Keeffe) O’Keeffe pioneered the way for flowers to be recognized as something that was dynamic, nonconformist and a form of artistic expression. (Griffin 43) Her career spanned more than sixty years and during this time she produced over two hundred floral pieces, with the greatest number of them being created between the years 1918-1932. (Knopf)

When O’Keefe first started painting florals, she would capture the entire flower, stem and leaves. She quickly moved away from this and started to focus the image on the core and magnified the fine details. (Georgia O’Keeffe) Looking at a flower in this way allowed O’Keeffe to inject vitality and strength into the subject matter and separate it from the traditional botanical paintings being done by artists during this time period. (Georgia O’Keeffe) O’Keeffe commented that “Everyone has many associations with a flower. You put out your hand to touch it, or lean forward to smell it, or maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking, to give it to someone to please them. But one rarely takes the time to really see a flower. I have painted what each flower is to me and I have painted it big enough so that others would see what I see.” (Griffin 43)

A close friend of O’Keeffe, Paul Strand, was the artist who initially familiarized her with the concept of enlarging subject matter. Strand was a photographer who used his camera to create images of bowls, car wheels and cameras. Even though O’Keeffe’s paintings of flowers were inspired by photography, she was never interested in creating flowers that looked photorealistic. (Griffin 44-45) Flowers were the ideal subject matter for O’Keeffe with their hard edges and curved silhouettes. She loved to frequent florist shops in New York City and spent much of her time in the garden – this allowed her to intensely study and understand her subject matter and view it from a very different perspective. (Griffin 43)

While residing in New York, O’Keeffe became very aware of the fact that most people did not take the time to look at the beauty around them, her paintings were a way of reconnecting people with the incredible splendor of the natural world. (Georgia O’Keeffe) They were not meant to be perfect replicas of the floral subjects, but instead were her way of ingeniously communicating their loveliness. (Georgia O’Keeffe) Additionally, the close-up flowers were painted without any setting framed around them – producing an almost immaterial space. (Marshall 11) As a child O’Keeffe made illustrations of flowers, but as an adult did not come back to this focus until 1919, with a collection of oil and watercolor paintings of red cannas lilies (Figure 1). (Griffin 43) O’Keeffe commented that another reason why she started to paint botanicals was that they didn’t move and were much more cost-effective than models. (Karbo 145)

By taking such a small object and magnifying it, O’Keeffe felt that people would be forced to stop and take the time to notice her work. (Karbo 146) She made the statement that, “I’ll tell you how I happened to make the blown-up flowers. In the twenties, huge buildings sometimes seemed to go up overnight in New York. At that time I saw a painting by Fantin-Latour, a still-life with flowers I found very beautiful, but I realized that were I to paint the same flowers so small, no one would look at them because I was unknown. So I thought I’ll make them big like the huge building going up.

People will be startled; they’ll have to look at them – and they did.” (Marshall 92) O’Keeffe’s flowers were womanly, commanding and sensual and were rendered in shocking colours - turquoise, pink, bright red and cobalt blue. The need to be taken seriously was very important to O’Keeffe, but this did not stop her from pushing the boundaries with the hues she used in her paintings. She was proud of her work and promoted all facets of life being aesthetically pleasing – even art. (Karbo 146) Intimacy and monumentality were fused within her flowers – they allow the observer to put themselves in the frame of reference that a bumblebee experiences when in front of a flower. O’Keeffe found shelter in flowers and wanted them to be the spark that would stir inspiration and emotions. (Griffin 43) A flash of amazement is experienced when first viewing her paintings. O’Keeffe believed that artists could use the natural world to expose the inner state of mind. (Griffin 44)

In 1924 O’Keeffe’s, Flower Abstraction (Figure 2) was featured in one of the initial series of her floral paintings. The canvas was filled with the floral form and the bright central interior of the bloom was completely exposed. The hues of the petals were a mixture of lavender, living coral, powder blue, soft white and bold canary yellow. The flower is magnified in a way that allows the petals to become abstracted and look like gentle folding forms being born from the light filled center. (Marshall 14) Critics often tried to imply that there was an erotic and sensual undercurrent within O’Keeffe’s floral still life paintings. (Griffin 46) Modernism was one of the main reasons for this – a common theme in this movement was sexuality being injected into the work of poets, writers and artists work after the mid-nineteenth century. This school of thought was born in Paris where bohemian artists used eroticism to stir up and get the attention of the French middle class. (Griffin 46)

The critical feedback coupled with the existing modernist movement fueled the belief that O’Keeffe’s flower paintings were sexual in nature. (Griffin 47) However, many observers of her work took the stance that the paintings were absolutely feminine and the embodiment of a women. This viewpoint was further solidified when O’Keeffe herself said, “I feel there is something unexplored about women that only a woman can explore.” (Griffin 47-48) Her flowers differentiated her from the mainly male body of artists during this time because of how distinctively feminine and daringly exposed they were. (Griffin 49) Stereotypes about women were fueled by her paintings because they embodied sexuality, raw emotions and the thought that women can be mystifying beings. Many people still hold the belief today that O’Keeffe was a pioneer for femininity and reinterpreted the floral genre as an unrestrained avant-garde woman. (Griffin 61)

A New York Times reviewer noted that she was the embodiment of a “superheroish mighty mother” and another critic stated that she was, “The Priestess of the Eternal Feminine.” (Karbo 147-148) The famous photographer Alfred Stieglitz, O’Keeffe’s husband, created a series of photographs of her, many of which were close-up nudes that objectified her body. These images further strengthened that she was unconstrainted and willing to fully reveal her physical body – much like how she painted her flowers. (Griffin 48-49)

O’Keeffe’s floral body of work initially can seem prescribed and monotonous. However, when it is looked at as a collection it is very apparent that the colours, arrangements and formations differ broadly. The stunning Oriental Poppies (Figure 4) is a great example of how using flowers as her model allowed O’Keeffe’s immense talents with mixing various colours to stand out. The poppies appear to be bursting out of the canvas and are made up of bold oranges and reds that differ greatly to the violet purple core. The floral detail is soft and abstract - this helps to create the essence of energy and delight that the viewer feels when looking at this piece. (Georgia O'Keeffe) O’Keeffe’s paintings also often used a very small range of hues to create extremely harmonious compositions.

A beautiful example of this is White Rose and Larkspur No. II (Figure 5) which is made up of hues of soft violet, blue and white with hints of yellow and green. There is an otherworldly feel to this piece of work because of the large scale of the lavender larkspur compared to the fragile but fully blooming white rose – they both infuse into the soft blue background. (Griffin 45) Within many of the floral painting of Georgia O’Keeffe there is a mixture of both marvellous self-assurance of emotion combined with astoundingly delicate declarations. The canvas is filled with complementary colours that add an astonishing brightness to her flowers. (Barson 138)

O’Keeffe’s paintings are a self-portrait of an artist who was willing to expose herself within her work. They are multifaceted and powerful and when a viewer studies them they can feel the joy and raw emotion that went into creating this prolific collection of floral works. (Knopf N.P.) She will forever be known for her plethora of unique floral paintings and changed the way that a flower was viewed and represented artistically by injecting herself into the flowers and revealing their essence.