{"id":13211,"date":"2016-07-20T09:16:31","date_gmt":"2016-07-20T07:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/?p=13211"},"modified":"2016-07-20T16:18:35","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T14:18:35","slug":"georgia-okeeffe-at-the-new-tate-the-unexplored-about-women-that-only-a-woman-can-explore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/2016\/07\/20\/georgia-okeeffe-at-the-new-tate-the-unexplored-about-women-that-only-a-woman-can-explore\/","title":{"rendered":"Georgia O&#8217;Keeffe at the new Tate: the unexplored about women that only a woman can explore"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t<style type=\"text\/css\">\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 {\n\t\t\t\tmargin: auto;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-item {\n\t\t\t\tfloat: left;\n\t\t\t\tmargin-top: 10px;\n\t\t\t\ttext-align: center;\n\t\t\t\twidth: 33%;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 img {\n\t\t\t\tborder: 2px solid #cfcfcf;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t#gallery-1 .gallery-caption {\n\t\t\t\tmargin-left: 0;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t\/* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes\/media.php *\/\n\t\t<\/style>\n\t\t<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-13211 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/oriental-poppies\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"112\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/CFA-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Oriental-Poppies-480x357.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-13210\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-13210'>\n\t\t\t\tGeorgia O\u2019Keeffe 1887-1986\nOriental Poppies 1927 \nOil paint on canvas\n762 x 1016 mm\nFrederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis \n\u00a9 2016 Georgia O&#8217;Keeffe Museum\/ DACS, London.\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/new-york-street-with-moon\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"93\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/CFA-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/New-York-Street-with-Moon-299x480.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-13209\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-13209'>\n\t\t\t\tGeorgia O\u2019Keeffe 1887-1986\nNew York Street with Moon 1925\nOil paint on canvas\n1220 x 770 mm\nCarmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on loan at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid \n\u00a9 2016 Georgia O&#8217;Keeffe Museum\/ DACS, London.\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/jimson-weed\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"123\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/CFA-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Jimson-Weed-394x480.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-13208\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-13208'>\n\t\t\t\tGeorgia O\u2019Keeffe 1887-1986\nJimson Weed\/White Flower No. 1 1932\nOil paint on canvas\n48 x 40 inches\nCrystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas, USA\nPhotography by Edward C. Robison III\n\u00a9 2016 Georgia O&#8217;Keeffe Museum\/DACS, London.\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><br style=\"clear: both\" \/><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/georgia-okeeffe-by-alfred-stieglitz-1918\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"119\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/CFA-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Georgia-OKeeffe-by-Alfred-Stieglitz-1918-382x480.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-13207\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-13207'>\n\t\t\t\tAlfred Stieglitz 1864-1946\nGeorgia O\u2019Keeffe 1918 \nPhotograph, palladium print on paper\n243 x 192 mm\nThe J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles \n\u00a9 The J. Paul Getty Trust.\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl><dl class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<dt class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/from-the-faraway-nearby\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"135\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/CFA-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/From-the-Faraway-Nearby-480x433.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" aria-describedby=\"gallery-1-13206\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/dt>\n\t\t\t\t<dd class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='gallery-1-13206'>\n\t\t\t\tGeorgia O\u2019Keeffe 1887-1986\nFrom the Faraway, Nearby 1937\nOil paint on canvas\n914 x 1019 mm\nThe Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1959 \n\u00a9 2016 Georgia O&#8217;Keeffe Museum\/ DACS, London.\nPhoto: Malcom Varon\n\u00a9 2015. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art\/ Art Resource\/ Scala, Florence.\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>\n\t\t\t<br style='clear: both' \/>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p>It\u2019s a hot summer\u2019s day in London; looking up at the surrounding high rise buildings, including the new \u00a3260m extension to Tate Modern, the sunlight is too strong for the eyes. The buildings appear to disintegrate into the glare. Light transforms substance.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Inside the Tate the crowds have been building steadily since opening time. The line at the ticket office for Georgia O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s second major retrospective show in the UK is unusually long, even for this prestigious venue. For the art-loving tourist, the summer of 2016 will most likely be remembered for this blockbuster of a show.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>That O\u2019Keeffe has returned in so celebrated a fashion after the Haywood Gallery exhibition of 1993 may surprise those critics who lambasted her achievements as a painter. For example, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/art-a-legend-in-her-own-landscape-andrew-graham-dixon-argues-that-despite-the-great-american-myth-1455033.html\" target=\"_blank\">Andrew Graham-Dixon claimed<\/a> that O\u2019Keeffe was a mediocre painter and little more than a self-publicist. Other critics were of much the same opinion at the time. But O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s reputation has gained additional, and literal, value after her \u2018Jimson Weed\/White Flower No.1\u2019 (which adorns the cover of the sizeable catalogue) was bought, via Sotheby\u2019s, from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.okeeffemuseum.org\" target=\"_blank\">The Georgia O\u2019Keeffe Museum<\/a> for $44.4m in 2014. This made it the most expensive work of art painted by a female artist to date.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Tanya Barson has curated the Tate show expertly. Although there are over one hundred paintings on display (plus a similar number of photographs from Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand and Ansel Adams) the arrangement is never crowded. In many of the rooms particular walls stand out to present just three or four canvases. This curated feature enables a punctuated flow to the exhibition. To add an air of scholarship, additional elements include displays of many publications, including Stieglitz\u2019s \u2018Camera Works\u2019, and books from O\u2019Keefe\u2019s personal collection. Documentary evidence of this nature further endorses an overt historical status to the artist.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Undoubtedly the hype provided by Stieglitz for gallery 291, that accompanied O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s emergence on the contemporary art scene of New York a century ago, has paid off. 291 was a restricted but influential space for introducing European avant-garde art and American painters to his clientele. Without this fortuitous opportunity (O\u2019Keeffe had not sought exposure directly from her future husband) her near mythological fame as a woman artist might otherwise have been based on a similar \u2018outsider\u2019 distinction to that afforded to Agnes Martin (resident of Taos, New Mexico).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As a similarly reclusive (but not lonely) figure, O\u2019Keeffe developed a notable range of paintings that forged the genres of still life with landscape painting. These often resulted in surreal-like imagery. But it is the sexually suggestive images of flowers that have mainly established O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s reputation for both a general and a feminist audience. \u2018Calla Lily in Tall Glass No.2\u2019 [1923] and \u2018White Iris\u2019 [1930] will ensure that some blooms will never look the same again.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, this time last year, the queues for the Agnes Martin exhibition at the same venue were not so long, and the populist appeal was far less evident &#8211; although the longer term influence on emerging styles and interests of subsequent artists in the latter half of the century and beyond is possibly equal. Born a generation earlier than Martin, it was her promotion and arrival (in that order) in New York that quickly established O\u2019Keeffe.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Possibly the most positive aspect of O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s historical status is that the hegemony of the very best artists as being almost exclusively male was successfully challenged. This enduring reputation was based on Stieglitz\u2019s and his circle\u2019s claim that O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s imagery revealed her gender and female sexuality as a revelatory aspect in a burgeoning, and modern, American art.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But the pronouncement, in 1917, that O\u2019Keeffe \u201c\u2026has found expression in delicately veiled symbolism for \u2018what every woman knows,\u2019 but what women heretofore have kept to themselves\u201d, by critic Henry Tyrell, sounds peculiar, trite, or even uncomfortable, today. And it was O\u2019Keeffe who challenged this assumption in the context of the culturally assumed second-class status of the female artist. She considered it constricting to be labeled a \u2018woman artist\u2019, as it implied less importance than that given to her male equivalent. Although she did make prescient statements, such as, \u201cI feel there is something unexplored about women that only a woman can explore\u201d that suggest that she had some notion of gender differences. This would interest the emergence of a feminist interpretation of art history and practice established by Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, Linda Nochlin and others from the early 1970s onwards. Subsequently, O\u2019Keeffe, especially through her flower paintings and the photographic portraits, provides an iconography for feminist art.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But the exhibition is not presented to serve any didactic platform, except to celebrate a fully realised career. Displayed in more-or-less chronological sequence, opening with O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s graphical and highly subjective charcoal studies of 1915\/6. Stieglitz considered these studies as personifications of O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s female psyche, not just as playful abstractions. There are several of the early abstract paintings on display too: compositions of the mind and partly inspired by her reading of Kandinsky and an interest in chromesthesia &#8211; a form of synaesthesia which associates sounds with colour.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We also see a small selection of watercolours, including, \u2018Pink and Blue Mountain\u2019 [1916] and \u2018Blue Hill No. II\u2019 [1916], which reveal an emotional reaction to landscape. If there is a criticism of the show, it is a shame that significantly more of O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s paintings in this liquid medium are not on display. Arguably, the watercolours are amongst the most dynamic and satisfying of the whole show. They suggest the promise of a more lyrical and expressionistic abstraction in the future. But the bulk of the exhibition reveals a laborious, yet methodical, wet-in-wet admixture of white and colour that became a dominant characteristic of O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s practice.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A particular aspect of O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s early work, and more subtly evident in later years, is the combination of the straight edge and the curve. For example, the extraordinary \u2018Red and Orange Streak\u2019 [1919] features a Bowie-esque (viz. Aladdin Sane) lightening bolt that curves diagonally from top-right to bottom left. A sharp geometric feature is also found in, \u2018Black Lines\u2019 [1919] and echoed later in more drawings and oil paintings: e.g. \u2018Blue and Green Music\u2019 [1919\/21]; \u2018New York Street with Moon\u2019 [1925] and \u2018Black, White and Blue\u2019 [1930]: or much more discretely in \u2018Blue I\u2019 and \u2018Blue II\u2019 [both 1958].<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps it is for subject and content, rather than any extraordinary range of painting skills, that O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s work can claim a place in the history of modernism? For example, in response to the initially biased, but well-meaning, readings of her works, the strong willed O\u2019Keeffe re-directed her attention (a literal referencing, via the advent of the photographic image) to New York Cityscapes to designate modernity.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The strongest wall in Room 4 included, \u2018New York Street with Moon\u2019 [1925]. This is O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s first painting of the city and is another early example of presenting an intriguing relationship between one aspect and another, i.e. the built and the natural environment (later this is replaced by bones and skulls in the landscape). \u2018East River from the 30th Story of the Shelton Hotel\u2019 [1928] records an almost monochromatic depiction of the architecturally crowded cityscape. The river offers the only physical, and visual, escape from a claustrophobic space. Even the smog-bound sky has been compositionally reduced to a thin band of pink and blue.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to live alone in the desert \/ I want to be like Georgia O&#8217;Keeffe\u201d<br \/>\nWarren Zevon (\u2018Splendid Isolation\u2019, 1989)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Surely, O\u2019Keeffe was a country girl at heart? During the 1920s, O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s escape from the city was often recorded in landscape paintings, many from visits to Lake George in upstate New York where the Stieglitz family had property. \u2018Lake George\u2019 [1922] exemplifies a predilection for simplicity of colour range and execution that was still evident in her final years.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There is a sense of O\u2019Keeffe establishing her maturing identity as an artist after a trip to New Mexico in 1929 where she felt at home. She settled there permanently in 1949. \u2018Black Cross with Stars and Blue\u2019 [1929] is a graphically strong composition that virtually pushes the cross in the foreground into the viewer\u2019s face, but offers a distant view of mountains and a starry sky to relieve the visual confrontation.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>From hereon the still-life\/landscape iconography develops significantly. The space of the American West, in contrast to the more urbanised East Coast, enables O\u2019Keeffe to fully develop the imagery that forms the central core of the exhibition. \u2018Summer Days\u2019 [1936]; \u2018Deer\u2019s Skull with Pedernal\u2019 [1936]; \u2018From the Faraway, Nearby\u2019 [1937] might allude to vanitas paintings, reminders of the certainty of death in the European still-life tradition. In pictorial terms, space is typically juxtaposed as near and far.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The mythic persona is also further established. She was celebrated photographically all through her life; photogenically supported by her attire. The legend of Georgia O\u2019Keeffe also encompasses the celebrity status of the 20th century artist. Like Salvador Dali in the same era, and prior to fellow Americans, Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol, photographs of O\u2019Keeffe are as well known as her paintings.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In the latter sections of the exhibition the advent of commercial flight, offering a new aerial perspective on the landscape, and recognition of Native American culture encroaches upon her work. (The \u2018Kachina\u2019 drawings and paintings in Room 12 are studies of dolls representing a spirit being from western Pueblo Indian culture.) And in the final room, \u2018Sky Above the Clouds III \/ Above the Clouds III\u2019 [1963] stands out as an organic and abstract composition as it suggests a pool of lilies on a pond &#8211; but is a view of the clouds from above.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But just before the end of the show: \u2018Wall with Green Door\u2019 [1953], \u2018In The Patio No. IV\u2019 [1948] and \u2018My Last Door\u2019 [1952\/4], forms an astounding wall. These virtually minimalist, geometric\/abstract canvases, demonstrate that \u2018late periods\u2019 are not only the domain of male painters. From a dominant preoccupation with landscape, there is a final flourish of abstraction that approaches the arena of post-painterly abstraction.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This exhibition demonstrates that O\u2019Keeffe had a visual-poetic sensibility: from the use of lightness and spatial configurations, to object transformations, to simplicity of execution. Therefore, as viewers of any exhibition we must beware of \u2018received\u2019 interpretations &#8211; however compelling. The commentary that opens up, rather than closes down, our understanding are the most productive. For example, the artist Ian McKeever has written:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat I admired particularly in her work is the quality of stillness\u2026 and the fragility and brittleness I sense there too. One can feel in O\u2019Keeffe the dryness of the arid New Mexican landscape. Feel that quality which the American poet William Carlos Williams referred to as a world of actions being stilled as in a world of stones: in this case bleached stones. Her work is dry in subject matter and dry as painting.\u201d<br \/>\n(From his essay, \u2018Light and Heat \/ Black and White\u2019, 2005.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As viewers too, with or without an agenda or prior knowledge, the paintings have to be the starting point for a meditation of sorts. We shall have to see if this exhibition purposefully contributes to the ongoing debate on the status of women in art and in the wider domains of culture. Gender and feminist issues aside, the Georgia O\u2019Keeffe exhibition will undoubtedly attract visitors and media coverage simply because of the sheer visual enticements of the work itself. Especially the flowers\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s a hot summer\u2019s day in London; looking up at the surrounding high rise buildings, including the new \u00a3260m extension to Tate Modern, the sunlight is too strong for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13207,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1796],"tags":[2079,2080],"class_list":["post-13211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mapping-the-artscape","tag-georgia-okeeffe","tag-tate-modern"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}