Georgia O'Keeffe

Paper Summary:

O'Keeffe is mostly known for her blend of abstraction and pictorialism which she applied to flowers, animal bones and landscapes. This paper looks at her style and how it stressed contours and tonal transitions, which often transformed the subject into a powerful abstract image. Focusing on the painting "The Shelton With Sunspots", the writer argues that, although the painting shows elements of the Precisionist style, it also demonstrates O'Keeffe's unique manner of interpreting her chosen subject.

From the Paper:

"O'Keeffe is associated with the abstract art movement of the early twentieth century. Basically, abstractionism is a style that rejects realism and seeks to reduce subject matter to basic shapes. O'Keeffe's use of abstraction was influenced more by Asian art and the work of Wassily Kandinsky than by Cubism, which she regarded as "a relic of European Renaissance that was not native to American culture."1 O'Keeffe was also influenced by photography, the craft that was practiced by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz. In the 1920s, O'Keeffe was also associated with a group of artists known as the "Precisionists." The Precisionists created works that were a "compromise between realism and abstraction," and which featured "precise technique" and "sharp-edged and simplified forms."2 Despite the influences of abstractionism, photography and the Precisionists, O'Keeffe was an individualist who "aspired to a style that was timeless, universal, and, above, all, impersonal."3"

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