O Keeeffe Visual Analysis

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Cities worldwide containing enormous skyscrapers, bustling streets, and breathtaking views has captured artists attention and been the focal point of thousands of art pieces. However, the way an artist portrays their interpretation of the city often varies. At first glance, Fernand Léger’s 1919 The City and Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1925 New York Street With Moon appear to be extremely different photos— the color schemes, spacing, and amount of detail to objects and movement for each photo are distinct opposites. However, when placed side by side, the paintings shockingly present a similar argument about the nature of city life. When comparing Léger’s and O’Keeffe’s paintings, the artists evoke feelings of imprisonment and confinement through the …show more content…
O'Keeffe, similarly to Léger, specialized in her own style, an interpretation of abstraction. Before her rise to fame, O’Keeffe had learned the technique of traditional realist painting but began to learn about new styles of art, specifically abstraction. O’Keeffe wanted her art to be a unique language where she could express her feelings and ideas. She was able to make this possible with her abstract artistic vision. O’Keeffe rose to fame through her paintings of New York skyscrapers and flowers before settling down in New Mexico, where she obsessed over the indigenous art, adobe architecture, and barren landscape. New York Street with Moon is a fusion of realism and abstraction in order to convey her emotions and have the viewer comprehend her artistic …show more content…
Although O’Keeffe emphasizes the use of cool shaded colors, she highlights the center of her painting with the light yellow aura of a streetlight. However, the usage and significance of bright colors in Légers and O’Keeffe’s paintings vary. As I previously mentioned, Léger uses bright colors to create a feeling of chaos and tightness. O’Keeffe, on the other hand, uses the bright colors to evoke the feeling of isolation and confinement. Because O’Keeffe paints the aura with an increasing transparent center, creating the illusion of a lone streetlight flicking in the street, which adds eerie and ominous movement to her painting. Gazing at the painting traps the viewer as if they are in a figurative jail cell in solitary confinement, only having a flickering lamp to comfort themselves. O’Keeffe builds this scene to create a feeling of imprisonment within the city environment which makes the viewer claustrophobic, as the city walls are blocking them from

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