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Afternoon everyone - it's time for the next instalment of vulva art history **crowd roars with excitement**
Today is all about the late, great Georgia O'Keeffe and her infamous floral paintings many have interpreted to actually be vulvas...
Today is all about the late, great Georgia O'Keeffe and her infamous floral paintings many have interpreted to actually be vulvas...
So a little background on O'Keeffe - born in 1887 in Wisconsin, O'Keefe grew up on a farm and studied fine art in Chicago, becoming an art teacher in South Carolina. She constantly experimented with realism and by the 1920s became one of the most successful artists in America
She is best known for her vivid, dream-like landscapes but mostly for her enlarged, magnified floral paintings that are instantly recognisable as an O'Keefe painting.
(Image: Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1, 1932, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, (c)Georgia O'Keeffe Museum)
(Image: Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1, 1932, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, (c)Georgia O'Keeffe Museum)
Despite the floral works being such a small part of her artistic legacy, they have become one of the biggest art history conversations around her body of work. The big question many ask is whether several of her floral paintings were in fact depictions of VULVAS
And it's easy to see why many have looked back on her work through this lens - this work (Grey Line with Black, Blue and Yellow, c.1923, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (c) Georgia O'Keeffe Museum) is often flagged as the most vulval of them all!
However, O'Keeffe strongly denied this throughout her career. The interpretation of the painting being vulval started fairly early on in their circulation - Sigmund Freud's writing was becoming increasingly popular in America throughout the 1920s, and his views had a big impact.
Freud wrote that one way of looking at art, besides its aesthetic value, was as an expression of the artists unconscious thoughts or desire. Because of this many began to read into the many narrative layers in paintings in much more detail - or as O'Keeffe herself put it, project
O'Keeffe publicly said on several occasions that many a Freudian theory was projected onto her work, but simply weren't true. In her eyes and in her presentation, they were simply just flowers.
The 1970s saw further interpretation of her work - the emergence of artist such as Judy Chicago (who will be subject to a thread later this month!), who included O'Keeffe in her famous Dinner Party work as a feminist icon, saw a reclamation of O'Keeffe's work by feminists
O'Keeffe was praised for depicting 'feminine iconography' and several artists approached her in the 1970s to collaborate on contemporary pieces. O'Keeffe refused to collaborate.
(Image: Autumn Trees-The Maple, 1924, Oil on canvas. (c)Georgia O'Keeffe Museum)
(Image: Autumn Trees-The Maple, 1924, Oil on canvas. (c)Georgia O'Keeffe Museum)
Her work was seen as a soft, feminine antithesis to the harsh, stark masculine works of her contemporaries such as Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko. The problem with this, however, is that the works were constantly looked at through a gendered gaze - whether good or bad commentary.
In the recent retrospective of O'Keeffe's work at Tate Modern, it was flagged that the Freudian theory that her flower paintings were of the vulva was first put forward in 1919 by Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer who first promoted O’Keeffe’s work & later became her husband.
It was argued that this was now a “cliched interpretation”, written almost 100 years ago and perpetuated by male art critics at the time, and was “gendered and outdated.”
Although originating from a patriarchal source, many argue that its modern reclamation by the feminist movement is a positive one. The works continue to be analysed and written about through this lens to this day
(Image: Black Iris, 1926 (c)Georgia O'Keeffe Museum)
(Image: Black Iris, 1926 (c)Georgia O'Keeffe Museum)
The flower is a powerful symbol used throughout art history to symbolise femininity and sexuality to name but a few, however it's hard to fully endorse the idea that these paintings were vulval when the artist themselves were so against this interpretation.
I'm a great believer, however, in personal interpretation. To some, these are beautiful flowers, to others these paintings are sensual, delicate depictions of the vulva. What they definitely are, however, are some of the finest works created in the 20th century.
That's all for today! Thanks for tuning in and I'll be posting again next Monday and every Monday going forward during this lockdown! Have a fanny-tastic day!
