Georgia O’Keeffe: Prowess, Strength, and Femininity

On November 15, 1887, Georgia Totto O’Keeffe was born to Francis Calyxtus O’Keeffe and Ida Totto O’Keeffe at a family dairy farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. O’Keeffe was one of seven children, and one of three who received art lessons at home. She continued her passion for art by further receiving art instruction from Sarah Mann, a local watercolorist. Throughout her schooling, O’Keeffe was encouraged by her teachers and principals to pursue art as a formal education. In the Fall of 1905, O’Keeffe studied at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. There O’Keeffe studied alongside John Vanderpoel but was forced to withdraw, in the Summer of 1906, from the institute and move to Williamsburg, Virginia to reside with her family due to her lingering sickness. 

    In 1907, O’Keeffe attended the Art Students League in New York; she studied with William Merritt Chase, F. Luis Mora, and Kenyon Cox. In January of the following year, she visited an exhibition in The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession located at 291 Art Gallery, operated by Alfred Stieglitz; the exhibition featured works on paper by Auguste Rodin. After being awarded the League’s 1907-08 Still Life Scholarship, she attended the League’s Outdoor School at Lake George, New York. 

    In 1912, after spending her Summer at Lake George, New York, O’Keeffe was employed by her previous place of schooling, Chatham Episcopal Institute in Chatham, Virginia, as an art teacher. Back in Virginia, O’Keeffe also attended a drawing class at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she is taught by Alon Bement, from the Teachers College at Columbia University. There, O’Keeffe was introduced to the ideas of his mentor, Arthur Wesley Dow, who was then the head of the Art Department at Teachers College. Dow emphasized the importance of art being an expression of personal style and design. It was then that O’Keeffe experienced an awakening when concerning her art style. In that same year, O’Keeffe moved to Amarillo, Texas where she served as the supervisor of drawing and penmanship in public schools. It is here where O’Keeffe starts to experiment with her own art. O’Keeffe broke from realism and developed her own visual expression through more abstract compositions. 

    O’Keeffe’s work was first featured at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 Gallery. Initially, Stieglitz featured her charcoal drawings without informing her, thus she confronted him and therefore established, about, a thirty-year correspondence with Stieglitz. Pelvis with Pedernal, 1943, is one painting of a series of seven pelvis paintings shown at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery, An American Place, early in 1944. The exhibition also included large works depicting large flowers and the view of the New Mexican landscape. An American Place featured artists such as Ansel Adams, Arthur Dove, John Marin, Charles Demuth, Paul Strand, and other American artists including Stieglitz himself. Thus, Pelvis with Pedernal belonged first to Alfred Stieglitz, who ironically became O’Keeffe’s partner after O’Keeffe settled her dispute with him back in 1916 when she first confronted him about the public exhibition of her work. It is no surprise that Georgia O’Keeffe became Stieglitz’s muse, as he featured her at An American Place annually starting in 1923 until his death in 1946. 

    Pelvis with Pedernal, 1943, remained in Stieglitz’s collection until his death in July of 1946. She moves to New Mexico permanently, but she still is actively involved at An American Place organizing her own exhibition, Georgia O’Keeffe: Paintings 1946-1950. It is within that same year, 1950, where O’Keeffe and Edith Halpert, owner of The Downtown Gallery, becomes O’Keeffe’s exclusive agent. It is not until 1961 where O’Keeffe organizes and installs her last exhibition at The Downtown Gallery, Georgia O’Keeffe: Recent Paintings and Drawings, which opens in early April. This is important when considering Pelvis with Pedernal because Halpert acquired it from Stieglitz’s collection, which was then being managed by O’Keeffe herself, to be exhibited at The Downtown Gallery. Essentially, Pelvis with Pedernal was most likely featured at The Downtown Gallery in between the 11-year period that O’Keeffe and Halpert started to collaborate. In Early October of 1970, the Whitney Museum of American Art, alongside Georgia O’Keeffe, installed a retrospective titled Georgia O’Keeffe. The Whitney Museum of Modern Art and The Downtown Gallery are both contributors to the rise and acclaim of  American Modern Art, considering that both places exhibited Pelvis with Pedernal, 1943. Though, based on the placement of the museum accession stickers on the back of the canvas, it seems as though the Whitney featured Pelvis with Pedernal before being featured at The Downtown Gallery. 

    Pelvis with Pedernal, 1943, now belongs to the Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute’s collection and is currently on display in an exhibit featuring American Modern Art. Based on the accession number label on the back of the canvas featuring Pelvis with Pedernal, it was acquired by the Institute in 1950 as the 19th object acquired that year. Thus, Pelvis with Pedernal served a lot of time at different art exhibitions but until then it is now permanently apart of the Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute’s collection. 

Most of O’Keeffe’s paintings are of her travels, and long-stays, in Santa Fe, New Mexico’s enchanting nature. As briefly mentioned before, Pelvis with Pedernal was part of a series of seven paintings regarding bones Georgia O’Keeffe found during her walks in the New Mexican desert. O’Keeffe states, “When I started painting the pelvis bones I was most interested in the holes in the bones – what I saw through them – particularly the blue from holding them up in the sun against the sky as one is apt to do when one seems to have more sky than earth in one’s world.” Most of O’Keeffe’s works incorporating the motif of bones are mainly of skulls. In those specific paintings, O’Keeffe’s work on skulls shows a direct view of skulls. Rather, in her works involving pelvic bones, she assumes that of various viewpoints. 

Ram’s Head, Morning Glory, 1938, serves as a perfect example of O’Keeffe’s dichotomous work when bones and skulls were involved. Pelvis II, 1944, was apart of the seven pelvic paintings and further differentiates O’Keeffe’s careful consideration of depicting pelvic bones. 

In Pelvis with Pedernal, there exists such a stark contrast between the hue of the blue environment surrounding the carcass of a once-living being. Color, in this painting, exists as one element that creates a contrast between symbols. O’Keeffe’s lines and form in Pelvis with Pedernal, albeit at first glance soft and feminine, these lines are strong as they produce this existence of difference existing between two different beings. These contrasting elements ultimately create a feeling of tension between that of the living and that of death; “life” is represented through the bright background whereas “death” is the main image evidently shown in the foreground with the pelvis of a carcass. O’Keeffe states, “when I started painting the pelvis bones I was most interested in the holes in the bones—what I saw through them- particularly the blue from holding them up in the sun against the sky as one is apt to do when one seems to have more sky than earth in one’s world-

They were most wonderful against the Blue—that Blue that will always be there as it is now after all man’s destruction is finished.” Pelvis with Pedernal serves as a memento mori, remember that with life there, too, comes death. The blues of the sky and of the mountains that O’Keeffe became fond of represents the ability of life’s persistence, whereas the pedernal symbolizes death within a beautiful world. 

References:

          Georgia O’Keeffe, in Anita Pollitzer, A Woman on Paper: Georgia O’Keeffe (New York: 

  Touchstone/Simon Schuster, 1988), p. 239.

Georgia O’Keeffe. (n.d.). Retrieved October 1, 2019, from Biography website: https://www.biography.com/artist/georgia-okeeffe

O’Keeffe’s Art. (n.d.). Retrieved October 1, 2019, from Georgia O’Keeffe Museum website: https://www.okeeffemuseum.org/collections/okeeffes-art/

Georgia O’Keeffe—Her Life in Paintings from First Works to Last. (2018, February 27). Retrieved October 1, 2019, from Artists Network website: https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-history/georgia-okeeffe-life-in-paintings/

Georgia O’Keeffe | Pelvis II | The Met. (n.d.). Retrieved October 1, 2019, from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, i.e. The Met Museum website: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488229

The Alfred Stieglitz Collection | An American Place. (n.d.). Retrieved October 1, 2019, from /stieglitz/an-american-place/

Timeline. (O’Keeffe Museum.). Retrieved September 30, 2019, from Georgia O’Keeffe Museum website: https://www.okeeffemuseum.org/about-georgia-okeeffe/timeline/