O'KEEFFE, GEORGIA.   Term Paper ID:9007 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Life & works of Amer. painter. Outline.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Life & works of Amer. painter. Outline. Paper Introduction: Outline I. Introduction II. Georgia O'Keeffe A. Life B. Contributions to art C. Attitude to her art D. Critical views E. Formal elements III. Specific works A. Cow's Skull--Red, White and Blue (1931) B. Horse's Skull with White Rose (1931) C. From the Faraway Nearby (1937) D. Ram's Head-Hollyhock (1932) IV. Considerations of these four works as they indicate forms Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. In one such work--"Horse's Skull withWhite Rose" (1931)--the author treats the subject in a precise manner withthese unlike images--the skull and the flower--being sharply delineatedagainst a dark background. Georgia O'Keeffe describes her art thus: "Filling a space in abeautiful way. (12 October 197 ): 64-66.Vogue. Her creative career began with a strong sense of self-revelation when she determined to use her work to express feelings andother things that could be said in no other way than with color and shapes. A device which has made critics call her a Surrealist is heruse of unexpected combinations in vistas of desolation. In the first, the background is an abstraction in red,whites and blues and in the second the setting is an unreal desert and theblue of the desert sky. Hughes also notes that though there isnever a figure in her work--she has only painted one work with a humanfigure in it--but that her images are a rich and complex statement aboutfemale sexuality. It isfrom this period that her drawings come (Amon 6). In "Cow's Skull--Red, White and Blue," the subject is also shown fromthe frontal views and the background makes the white of the skull standout. The desert and the skulls of the animals who have diedthere are somehow Western American, it is true, but the paintings ofGeorgia O'Keeffe are not reminiscent of the Western school of painting inany significant degree. From the Faraway Nearby (1937) D. In her turn, she influenced otherpainters. What influences can be seen in the works of Georgia O'Keeffe? In her New York work,O'Keeffe treats the pictorial planes of the architectural structures withcharacteristic Cubist economy. Her works do seem to be original in thebest senses of the word, and they have a vitality and a life that beliestheir static and often "dead" subject matter. The frontal view is shown, and this ischaracteristic of many of her paintings to create a formal symmetricaldesign. It isalso easy to see the inference that Surrealist tendencies are present, andin a sense they may be, particularly in the second of the two paintings.The American locale of her work is apparent, and the formal elementscombine with the subject matter to produce works of unreal beauty.However, there is a strong sense of the real in the depictions of theobjects themselves, "Cowl's Skull--Red,, White and Blue" shows its American origins veryclearly. Unique qualities C. There is a concentration ofdesert images in her work that has led some to compare them to Surrealism.However, Hughes says that surrealism is almost by definition fantasticwhereas the works of O'Keeffe insist that they are not dreams. In her youngerdays, she was known as Stieglitz's wife and model, and his compositeportrait of her--some five hundred candid shots--influenced the art ofphotography to a great extent. Her art isindividual and expresses personal emotions and perceptions in a stylecombining strength and crystalline clarity. SurrealistVI. Life B. Her subjects were things that she had no words for, and her art had toexpress them directly and succinctly (Goodrich & Bry 7-9). Her imagery derives fromnature, but that nature is interpreted with great freedom. Her symbolic interpretation of the beauty of nature is amasterful composition of visual poetry, and unrelated images crystallizeinto a unified painting (Kahne 49-54). Consider two of her works: "Cowl's Skull--Red, White and Blue"(1931) and "From the Faraway Nearby" (1937). (October 197 ).Newsweek. That is what art means to me" (Kotz 37). Georgia O'Keeffe: An Analysis of Her Style. New York: Praeger, New York, 197 .Art News. Conclusion The subject of this investigation is the works of Georgia O'Keeffe.We will discuss the use of nature in the works of this artist. Of course, those colors and the form of the flag are abstractedbut the intent is clearly to draw forth American sentiment andidentifications. It is likely that sheretained some of what she learned while a student at the Art Institute inChicago, however, and her drawing skill and her use of smooth brushwork areresults of her academic background. American indicationsVII. She would later assimilate such formal innovationsas abstraction and flattened spaces, but she would reject the radicaltheories of the avant-garde in her determination to create out of herdistinctively American experience. Cubist C. Critical views E. Oriental B. Ram's Head-Hollyhock (1932)IV. Male painters depict what it is like to want a woman,and O'Keeffe paints what it is like to be a woman at a psychic level no mancan reach (Time 64-66). Those critics who find that her worklacks the paranoid approach of the Surrealists are correct, for even in themost bizarre of images there is a serenity and an acceptance of the beautyof the desert and the image. Robert Hughes has described her paintings as being like the desertitself, which he sees as a place with no middle ground-everything is eitherfar or near, held in hallucinatory clarity. Theinfluence of European forms has also been noted, though from the firstO'Keeffe, while showing a strong grasp of what was happening in Europe,never aligned herself with a particular style, be it foreign or American.What she reflected was the advanced art of her time, and this remained truethroughout her career. (December 1977): 37-45.~Amon Carter Museum of Western Art. The skull in this case is topped by antlers that reach tothe sky, and the object itself is out of all proportion to the desert hillson which it stands. "Georgia O'Keeffe at 9 ." Art News. During the 193 s and the 194 s, bones found in the desert became afrequent theme for the artist. OutlineI. Georgia O'Keeffe. (17 March-8 May 1966).Kahne, Joan Anne. O'Keeffe is dealing with the mirror ofnature within her own mind, and this is what gives her imagery itsseemingly surrealistic quality--the fact that it derives entirely from theperceptions of the artist and not from some outside school or movement.She is original in that she paints what she sees and tries to express herown inner view in the only way she can. O'Keeffe's New York paintings were more in line with Precisionistpainting, which was in turn influenced by Cubist concerns. Considerations of these four works as they indicate forms and themesV. Horse's Skull with White Rose (1931) C. Long Beach, CA: California State U, Unpublished Master's Thesis, 1972.----------------------- 8 The landscape serves as her real subject matters and the human formis noticeable by its absence. Journalists with a Freudian mind picturedher as the woman who painted sexy pictures of flowers, but they werewriters with little knowledge of art. The relics of the dead in thedesert are the subjects of both these paintings, with the skulls of theanimals featured. Among theelements indicating this are her controlled arrangement of forms, the useof industrialized America as her subject matters and precise, sharp-edgedforms with a smooth, highly finished surfaces. The overall assessmentof her art is that it is unique in contemporary America. Other American artists of her timeadopted certain superficial Cubist devices as a means of modernizing theiressentially realist approach, but O'Keeffe remained aloof from this trend(Art News). Contributions to art C. It has also beennoted that her real power as an artist has been hidden behind a series ofpopular images which have been propounded to explain her. Attitude to her art D. She was apioneer of native modern art over fifty years ago, and she has continuedthroughout her career to make major contributions to the art of our time.When she began to study art around 19 7, the America art world wascompletely conservative in outlooks and the revolutionary modern movementsgrowing in importance abroad were still unknown here. The moved to New Mexico in theThirties, and since that time her pictures of deserts and bones have beencoupled in the public mind with legends of her ability at killing the localrattlesnakes (Vogue). There is a strong American feeling inthese works without their being narrative or directly representative ofAmerican subjects. Georgia O'Keeffe A. A slightly different technique is used in the second painting--"Fromthe Faraway Nearby"--and this technique is a reflection on the ambiguitiesof the title. Neither are they indicative of European styles ona more than superficial level. Precisionist D. (1 March 1967).Kotz, Mary Lynn. One may not understand the symbols chosen, but one can see thatthey show a beautiful purity of tone quality and a clarity of contrast(Kahne 76). She taught at theUniversity of Virginia and later in another university in Texas. The viewer comes to accept the incongruitiesas somehow indicative of the locale. Specific works A. Formal elements B. Influences on O'Keeffe A. Thesoft colors and the use of varied formats, as well as the concentrationupon one subject, places her work closer in approach to the Chinese andJapanese than to the Europeans, and this is emphasized as well in her two-dimensional design, elimination of brushstrokes, decorative arrangement offorms, and handling of perspective and modeling. It is from this sense of unreality that the Surrealistconcept derives, but the work in this case is not so fantastic as would betrue in Surrealism. The need to make aliving pushed O'Keeffe into commercial art first, then into her teachingpositions. There are rolling, grayclouds to add movement to an otherwise static composition, and the formsall seem to demand sculptural tactility because of their sensualmodulation. There arecertain European influences apparent in the works of this artist, and shein turn has had an influence on contemporary painters. Consider"Ram's Head-Hollyhock" (1932), in which a purified skull and flowertranscend the rich, red hills of New Mexico. (12 October 197 ): 1 5.Time. Georgia O'Keeffe was born and raised on a farm in Wisconsin in afamily that combined Hungarian and Irish elements. Critical opinion takes strong note of the fact that no matter howabstract the work of Georgia O'Keeffe is on the surface, there remains astrong sense of "the smell and forms of the land" (Newsweek 1 5). Assessment of O'Keeffe A. Formal elementsIII. The mountains and desertsof New Mexico served as a rich source of material for Georgia O'Keeffe, andin many compositions--as in this one--they were subordinated to the crossand bone forms (Kahne 77). The works of Georgia O'Keeffe demonstrate a rare ability to createbeauty of form and mystery at one and the same time through thejuxtaposition of forms and colors. The object stands out because of its size, and thedichotomy emphasizes the ambiguities of the title, with the object in thedistance being shown in the foreground. The abstraction of the background has the look and the texture ofa flags and the colors of the American flag are used to enhance thissensation. Georgia O'Keeffe. Works CitedGoodrich, Lloyd and Doris Brys. Thecommonest object unfolds itself. The colors here are muted andpale, with pinkish desert sands and a brown, well-shaded skull topped bywhite antlers reaching into the blue of the sky. Unpublished Master's Thesis. However, othercritics have found that the bones are nothing more than her symbols for thedeserts. They were often combined with flower formsto produce a rather mysterious note. Neither of these works illustrates the kind ofCubist devices that were so popular during this same period of time. She did not have disciples as such, but her works have beeninfluential on a new generation of artists, including such painters asEllsworth Kelly, Larry Poons, Kenneth Noland, and Paul Feeley (Kahne 87). IntroductionII. Concerning the charge by some that she is a Surrealist, it is herdesert landscapes that have fueled this view, for she has often depictedunrelated floating forms mystically suspended over the deserts. Cow's Skull--Red, White and Blue (1931) B. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.