September 21, 2009 — Patrick Zimmerman

Georgia O’Keeffe: Pioneering Abstractions, Before the Desert

Georgia O’Keeffe is about to enjoy quite the cultural moment. In a high/low play of historic proportions, this month will see the opening of an exhibition of the late artist’s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art and, just a couple of days later, the premiere of a Lifetime cable network biography that traces her artistic development and tumultuous personal life.

There are two Georgia O’Keeffes; the story of the first begins in 1915, when she was a young art teacher in rural South Carolina and produced her first abstract drawings, which were also among the first fully abstract images by any American artist. O’Keeffe leaped into abstraction with a group of charcoal drawings that were among the most radical creations produced in the United States at that time. Three years later she had her first encounter with the photographer and dealer Alfred Stieglitz, who set her up in New York and initiated a long personal, professional and mutually promotional partnership.

Georgia O’Keeffe: The Early Abstractions

Georgia O’Keeffe and the Camera: The Art of Identity

(Please Click Image to View Slide Show)

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