Georgia O'Keeffe and our better nature

It was the late Georgia O'Keeffe's birthday a few weeks ago now and I've been taking time to understand her and her work more frequently in the past few weeks, through her sprawling landscapes of the American southwest and charcoal renderings of flowers falling in line with a heritage amidst the likes of female artists such as Rachel Ruysch and Anna Atkins. O'Keeffe was deeply interested in revealing how people are reflected in the nature they inhabit. To render a flower in such a way that perhaps it begins to take on the aura or characteristics of someone you know, an old friend. Flowers don't know they're beautiful and trees don't grow out of ego they were just simply created this way and perhaps that's why artists are so drawn to the untouched landscape there's a hint of jealousy in being untaught with a purpose that you don't grow restless over understanding. The "objective beauty" of nature that from the very moment you enter into this world something like a sunset orgrass in the wind is admired, for reasons science can't explain but an artist like O'Keeffe tries to translate or make it digestible. Despite the floral still-life being regarded as a primarily female-dominated tradition there are exceptions such as Pierre-Joseph Redoute a French court painter interested in creating an idealized version of the flower in nature. Thinking about how this act is an irrational means of exerting control over nature. Contrasting this with that of Atkins who acted very analytically in her portrayal of nature. Rendering plants precisely through the medium of cyanotype. Atkins could better be defined in the occupational sense as a scientist though she did have the ideals of an artist at heart. Some sources say she was the first woman to create a photograph. When we consider photography we don't immediately lean towards cyanotypes as the utmost example although cyanotypes are still a kind of photograph. Her father John George Children almost certainly encouraged a pursuit into the field of botany, given his background in the study of etymology, zoology, and mineralogy. More telling however is the history of women as portrait-makers, or lack thereof which guided Atkins and many other female artists into kinds of still life. Women as portrait makers in the painting medium was already a very controversial practice at Atkins's time never mind photography.

Apprenticeships were common and almost necessary for women seeking to study art to gain recognition in the art world. O'Keeffe's notable relationship with photographer Alfred Stieglitz was born out of art as the muse of over 300 photographs Stieglitz was a mentor before a lover, already an established artist as O'Keeffe was beginning her career. We see this particularly through his interest in photographing her hands as tools. There's an issue in criticizing artists who become so intertwined, like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera or Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith. One figure might begin to overshadow the other. In promoting O'Keeffe's work Stieglitz began to take an interest in implanting his own interpretations into the meaning which at times stood in vast contrast to O'Keeffe's intentions. Her aesthetic in painting the shape of flowers was to force the viewer to engage with the eternal and vastness of nature. The common myth that she intentionally painted female genitalia in her work stemmed from Stieglitz who used this interpretation of floral anatomy and bodily pleasure as a means of promotion in a largely male-dominated field the introduction of a kind of sex appeal interested critics more than the simplicity of the gracefulness of daisies and irises. As she stated in response to critics “Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time [...] I said to myself - I’ll paint what I see - what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it.” In direct contrast is her work surrounding the stripped down landscapes of New Mexico while still vibrant with a certain attention paid to the motion of the tones there's a difference in the kind of message O'Keeffe is presenting. The floral images feel like confrontation while her New Mexico work feels like an invation to do the labor yourself. That there's life beyond the scenery if you would only take the effort to seek it out.