She lived to almost 100, Georgia O’Keeffe, and over that long life she created an extensive body of work that always betrays a very female view of things. Whether early abstractions, the iconic flowers or the stylised landscapes of the American Southwest — her original, sensitive eye is always legible, reaching to the core of things. «People rarely take the time to really see a flower. I painted it big enough so that others would see what I see», she explained of her approach.
It is these oversized depictions of flowers that made the artist — born in 1887 on a remote farm in Wisconsin — famous worldwide. The focus on detail, the rich colours, the lush rendering lend her paintings an erotic aura; not a few viewers associate the blossoms with female genitalia, even though O’Keeffe never declared this her intention. As is the case with art that deserves the name, her pictures offer manifold readings.
At a time when male artists and their view of everything — including the female body — dominated, O’Keeffe deliberately created her own feminine visual language, full of sensuality and far from cliché. «Before I make the first brushstroke, I ask myself: is this really me? Was I perhaps influenced by a thought I took from a man? I try to paint a picture so that it is entirely a matter of women and at the same time entirely my own matter», she described her approach, which moves male viewers too.
In her later work the artist focused on landscapes — above all the stark beauty of New Mexico — rendered with the same stubbornness and intensity as the flowers before. When she died in 1986 at the age of 98, she was long regarded as an icon of modern American art. The Fondation Beyeler now presents a comprehensive selection from her life’s work, with some rarely shown pictures — an opportunity not to be missed. (Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, 23 January to 22 May 2022.)
This article appeared in MEN issue 1/21 (November 2021).
