Georgia O’Keeffe was an American Painter (1887 – 1986), “recognized as the Mother of American Modernism” (Wikipedia). I became curious when I found her in the series of stamps “American Artists 1913- 31” by the United States Postal Services. I had often heard her name but never taken a closer look.
After my move to the United States I thought it would be interesting to study American artists – with the opportunity of maybe seeing some original works in Museums, and also exploring mutual influences with European Artists. I have to admit that my interest in art has been very Europe-centred until now – focusing mainly on France and Britain in the 18th to 20th century.
My visit to the Hopper Exhibition was a first step to study American art, and I realized how looking at his drawings has influenced my own approach, by making me aware that my drawings lacked contrast and by encouraging me to work more boldly. So my look at Georgia O’Keeffe was not guided by any particular preconception. I was just curious about her work and hoped to learn something for my own practice.
The Wikipedia Article presented an interesting charcoal drawing: No. 13 Special 1916-17. I liked how this composition included basic forms of soft waves and sharp edges, and went from very light to very dark tones in smooth blendings versus hard contrasts. For me these elements are the building blocks of drawing and painting. Georgia O’Keeffe’s works have been been interpreted in Freudian terms. I’m not into this, but it’s true that the paintings I saw evoked erotic connotations, for example Blue-green (1919).
The video of a C-Span American History TV broadcast, “Life and Artwork of Georgia O’Keeffe” (2013) gave some background information. I found O’Keeffe’s New Mexico Landscape paintings and and some photographs of her as a young and aged woman really exciting. O’Keeffe seems to have developed from more naturalistic paintings of flowers and landscapes to complete abstract paintings in the same style.
The paintings also reminded me of some paintings by Edward Hopper with their tendency to simplify surface textures, and their focus on colour and their tones and contrasts. I recently realized that I have the same tendency and wanted to make a deliberate effort to create more varied textures on my surfaces, I’ll see how far I’ll get.
Besides flowers and landscapes, O’Keeffe also painted architectural views of New York, and I’m clearly interested in these I selected two paintings for a closer look: A Manhattan view and a New Mexico view. They are very different with respect to their choice of colours and the dominant kinds of shapes: The Manhattan view in blue-grey tones with a colder overall impression, and mostly rectangular shapes at defined angles. By contrast, the New Mexico view (1930) composed of softened triangular, wavy shapes and a combination of blue-grey tones for the shades and warmer earth tones for the hills. The paintings have in common their untextured object surfaces dominated by colour and tone, and the extended portrait format.
The choice of format is something I’d like to take on board for my own practice. I often felt when taking photographs that landscapes worked better in landscape format because this captures more of the perception of a wide area. But the camera view is still very restricted and distorted at the edges for technical reasons (unless the lens is corrected). I experimented with perspective correction using the Photoshop software – extending the left and right upper corners outwards until the “falling” vertical lines became straight again. This results in trapezoid image formats with some distortion in the sky area, but it reduces the compressed feeling created by inward falling vertical lines. Nevertheless, unless using a panoramic format camera or gluing together multiple consecutive views, the photograph will not convey the sense of open space one has when viewing a landscape.
So one big advantage of drawing from nature is that one can extend the format to panoramic, for example by using two sketchbook pages! I now understand an instruction in the townscapes exercise that I previously found obscure. Unfortunately I haven’t taken any consecutive photographs during my recent visit to the Brooklyn cemetery, but I hope to remember the idea when I’m out for an excursion next time.
A second aspect that I found important for my own practice was the colour intensity Georgia O’Keeffe achieved in her paintings. I selected Oriental Poppies (1928) as an example for deep orange to yellow tones, contrasted by black at the inside of the flower. Maybe this kind of colour intensity is reserved to oil or acrylic paintings. On the other hand, watercolours can be applied in very intense layers and might also achieve this intensity in the tones. This is something I was searching for in my drawings, but did not get there until now.
The third important aspect I discovered was that Georgia O’Keeffe painted landscapes as well as close-ups of details, employing the same basic technique of focusing on shape and tones. In the Oriental Poppies painting, a close-up, this results in almost a textured effect for the surfaces. So the same technique which creates a sense of flat surfaces at a larger scale creates a different effect in a close-up study.
To conclude, I’ll include these wonderful photograph by Alfred Stieglitz of Georgia O’Keeffe at age 45. I see so much willpower and masculinity in her personality which somehow is in great contrast to the delicacy and feminity in her paintings. And a second one showing her from the side. She must have been a fascinating woman.
Sources
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum – Browse the Collection Online http://contentdm.okeeffemuseum.org/cdm/search/collection/gokfa
Wikipedia Article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_O%27Keeffe
C’Span Video Library: Life and Art of Georgia O’Keeffe http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/310650-1
MoMa Netmuseum Article on Georgia O’Keeffe http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/geok/hd_geok.htm
MoMa Netmuseum Online Collection of Georgia O’Keeffe’s works http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections?ft=georgia+o%27keeffe
Alfred Stieglitz photographs of Georgia O’Keeffe at age 45 (1932) http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections?ft=georgia+o%27keeffe
Georgia o’Keeffe 1928 Oriental Poppies http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/georgia-o-keeffe/oriental-poppies