ART SERVICES WRITING
Written for Thea Westreich Art Advisory Services for Private Collection 2 November 1998.
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986)
Pelvis IV, 1943
Oil on canvas
16 x 12 inches
Georgia O’Keeffee is among the most important female artists in history, certainly one of America’s most famous and significant forgers of modernism in the twentieth century. Her mythical brand of unwavering artistic conviction and unique creative expression jarred the American avant-garde art scene, led by her future lover and husband Alfred Stieglitz. As the sole pioneer of native modern art, her enlightening color sense and extraordinary compositions have inspired generations of painters and adoring fans the world over.
O’Keeffe was born in 1887, the first of seven children who were raised on a dairy farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. O’Keeffe recalled being a loner from the start, preferring her privacy as a child even in such a large family. Her decision to become an artist at age thirteen was influenced by one of the local teachers, who showed O’Keeffe how to shade and watercolor and would loan the young artist books about art to read and study. Her career revelation coincided with her family’s move to Williamsburg, Virginia, where O’Keeffe’s quirky yet humorous nature made her quick friends at her new school. Her principal and art teacher, Ms. May Willis, convinced O’Keeffe upon graduation to continue her studies at the Chicago Art Institute, which led to classes at the Art Students League in New York in 1907 and 1908.
Uninspired by the strictly academic painting that her instructors taught at the Art Students League, O’Keeffe visited and quickly became fascinated by her first glimpse of modern art at the new gallery 291, where Alfred Stieglitz was creating quite a stir in New York City for championing not only photography as art but also racy shows such as Rodin’s abstracted figure sketches. This year was crucial in O’Keeffe’s development, as her exposure to European modern art and close friendships with several fellow art students in the city would reinforce her evolving artistic style and inform the young artist as to the exciting developments of the New York avant-garde and the Stieglitz circle. The deterioration of her family’s health and financial situation prompted O’Keeffe to spend the next decade in Williamsburg and Texas teaching art at a number of schools to help support her family and her painting.
O’Keeffe’s original voice quickly began to emerge through her quiet meditations of color and form away from the metropolis that had originally inspired her. Her solitary and eccentric nature seems a product of the intense ambition to facilitate her unique style of expression, uncluttered by the complexities of relationships and the hustle and bustle that she feared would bound her creative freedom. Through letters with one of her best friends, Anita Pollitzer, O’Keeffe kept her finger on the pulse of Manhattan and gallery 291 as she sent many of her new works to Anita over the course of her development between 1913 and 1917. Anita’s continued support of O’Keeffe’s fiercely private creative struggles is one of the highlights in the prolific life of this modern master, as Anita introduced Stieglitz to O’Keeffe through her drawings in 1917, to which he quietly exclaimed, “Finally, a woman on paper”. So began one of the most legendary love affairs in twentieth century art, which led to O'Keeffe’s first art shows and provided her with the love and support to blossom into one of the most original creative voices of her time.
Working from the writings of Kandinsky and Arthur Dow, O’Keeffe’s rapidly expanding vocabulary distilled nature into a language of unparalleled purity through color and form. Pelvis IV delights in the subtle tension of contrasting colors which stabilize the very nature of her uniquely composed subject. O’Keeffe brings her subjects into close focus, playing with form and composition as in Pelvis IV to illuminate the splendor and beauty of color that is inherent in everything organic. As much as she focuses on beauty, there is nothing frivolous in O’Keeffe’s work; everything unnecessary is discarded, which intensifies her pictorial spaces and highlights the shapes and textures O’Keeffe judiciously chooses to meditate on.
O’Keeffe’s lifelong fascination with nature and her trademark pastel palette stir easy rhythms in pieces like Pelvis IV, which echo her obsession with wide open spaces like New Mexico, where she would winter in the 1930’s and live permanently after Stieglitz died in 1946. O’Keeffe incessantly plays with volume and texture, softening the rugged mountains and the hardness of bones as in Pelvis IV, which reflects light so gently the piece of bone almost floats away in the airy nature of its paintedness. Stieglitz always said that this softness in her work exuded a feminine quality that men could never capture, which annoyed O’Keeffe as much as it captivated her.
In 1918 O’Keeffe returned from Texas to the center of the American art world in New York City as the precious new lover of Stieglitz, who showered the staunchly independent painter with critical acclaim and affection that she had never allowed into her life before. Stieglitz thrived on people, conversation, the pulsing motions of society, which appalled O’Keeffe’s monastic sensibilities and eventually created an ever expanding chasm in their deep love and respect for one another.
The simple and direct design of O’Keeffe’s long journey, which the artist insisted on and which often resulted in heavy criticism from the Stieglitz circle, mirrors the direct simplicity of her most unique and fantastic creative vision, which always took precedent over the people who walked cautiously through the aging artist’s life. One of the first women to achieve worldwide recognition as a painter, O’Keefe’s life and work are truly remarkable. Her legendary status as one of the central figures in the Stieglitz circle, the epicenter of the American modern art movement, cannot overshadow the monumental contributions to American painting that O’Keeffe created for the world to enjoy.