Expert: Jeni Andrews-Fraser - 12/10/2006

Question
What art movement was Georgia O'Keeffe?  (you'd think one would find this on the internet fairly easily, but I can't find it anywhere, and I have a paper due tomorrow, monday, about her!) HELP!

Answer
Hello Bailey - I doubt you will get this message in time to produce a decent-enough paper on O'Keefe - especially if you are relying on a combination of me and the internet.  O'Keefe isn't really part of any 'movemement' although she is loosely connected with Abstract Expressionism and is famouse for the purity and lucidity of her still-life compositions.  In 1916 the American photographer and art gallery director Alfred Stieglitz (whom she married in 1924) became interested in her abstract drawings and exhibited them at “291,” his gallery in New York City; her work was shown annually in Stieglitz's galleries until his death in 1946 and was widely exhibited in other important institutions. O'Keeffe, who moved to New Mexico in 1949, is best known for her large paintings of desert flowers and scenery, in which single blossoms or objects such as a cow's skull are presented in close-up views. Although O'Keeffe handles her subject matter representationally, the starkly linear quality, the thin, clear colouring, and the boldly patterned compositions produce abstract designs. A number of her works have an abstracted effect, the flower paintings in particular—such as Black Iris (1926, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City)—in which the details of the flower are so enlarged that they become unfamiliar and surprising. There is often, also, a highly eroticised 'reading' of O'Keefe's work - the flower paintings often represent close-ups of female genetalia .. but that's for you to discover, if you want to go down that route.
Good luck with your paper - but please don't leave things until the last minute next time: quality research takes time and you need to demonstrate your understanding of your topic, not just your ability to download or copy stuff from another source.