O'Keeffe's Flowers
- rachelradecki
- Dec 18, 2016
- 1 min read
“I feel there is something unexplored about women that only women can explore.”
Famous women in art history are hard to come by. Some of the most notable female artists in history are Artemesia Gentileschi, Mary Cassatt, Frida Kahlo and Gerogia O’Keeffe. O’Keeffe was one of the first artists, male or female, to bring European modern art to America. She was a part of the group Gallery 291, which helped bring recognition to modern American painters. Her painting “Pink and Blue II” in 1919 is an example of her modern abstract works.
Similar to Kandinsky, O’Keeffe combines soft colors, organic round lines and influence from music to create this enlarged, close-up flower. And if you know anything about O’Keeffe, you know that there’s a lot of controversy when it comes to her flowers. Yes, her flowers kind of look like vaginas.
O’Keeffe’s flowers have a strong sexual connotation. Critics have said that her flowers are symbolic of female genitalia, so now you’ll probably never be able to look at a regular flower the same way again. This representation also demonstrates O’Keeffe’s interest in Sigmund Freud at the time, who exposed the deep inner worlds of the unconscious in connection to sexuality.
More modern female artists have even used the sexual connotations of O’Keeffe’s art in making other art pieces.
Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” installation in 1979 glorifies famous women in history, each with their own spot at the dinner table. Each woman is also represented by an abstracted flower, emphasizing the power in a woman’s sexuality in this epic feminist artwork. Schedule
