How to Look #4: Georgia O'Keeffe and the Natural World

Georgia O’Keeffe is considered to be both a feminist and modernist icon in the canon of American art. Hibiscus with Plumeria, an oil painting created in 1939, is a beautiful example of O’Keeffe’s intellectually and creatively complex approach to abstraction.

In this piece, O’Keeffe has painted a hibiscus above a plumeria, set against a sky-blue background filled with delicate, wispy clouds. The stamen of the hibiscus hangs downward nearly brushing against the plumeria’s white petals. The artist has rendered the flower’s stamen with a botanist’s attention to detail, while simultaneously blurring and softening the stamen’s outline. The hibiscus is painted in luscious rose and blush tones. Light bounces off each petal creating a sense of swirling movement across the canvas. At first glance the painting represents a close up of two flowers. Due to O’Keeffe’s masterful use of light however, the petals of the hibiscus appear to swell forward and upward towards the viewer, rolling like waves towards the edges of the canvas. The hibiscus is an exercise in light and color, but with the plumeria, O’Keeffe works with form and line. The edges of a few of the plumeria’s white petals curve upward to reveal undersides of golden yellow that harmonize and balance the work. O’Keeffe’s masterful brushstrokes reflect a careful observation of nature. She works with the oval shape of the petal and mimics the concaving and convexing lines of each unique petal to set the flower in motion. The plumeria appears to spin on its stem, activating the lower half of the canvas.

O’Keeffe’s brand of abstraction developed from an intense love of nature (she was often inspired by her surroundings in New York and New Mexico) and from an intellectual desire to distill an object, revealing its most essential lines, shapes and colors. O’Keeffe independently forged her own distinctive method of abstraction not only within a male-dominated field of artists, art collectors and gallery owners, but also within a highly masculinized style: modernism. Georgia O’Keeffe remains one of the most celebrated woman artists of all time—and indeed one of the most innovative and daring modernists of the twentieth century—and yet her work has often been interpreted as “feminine.” O’Keeffe pushed back against Freudian interpretations of her work during her lifetime. However, this commentary has endured even into the contemporary moment, existing now as a part of her legacy as a woman and as an artist. At the core of these interpretations of O’Keeffe’s work is the question of whether a woman can contribute to the cult of the new, and if there are certain artistic qualities that can be categorized and deemed “feminine.” Increasingly works such as Hibiscus with Plumeria speak for themselves, serving to easily dismantle these interpretations that a woman’s art is merely bodily and naïve expression. The entire work is an effective experiment with scale, line, shape and color. Georgia O’Keefe’s Hibiscus with Plumeria displays the finesse and mastery of a great artist.

The New York Botanical Gardens are currently hosting a show entitled, "Georgia O'Keeffe: Visions of Hawaii." The show displays O'Keeffe's paintings alongside the natural forms she was so interested in working with. Check it out!