Not following any specific artistic movement of her time, O’Keeffe experimented with abstracting motifs from nature. She practiced realism to produce works that emphasized the primary forms of nature in a cropped photograph method she learned from photographer, Paul Strand. Many critics assume there is hidden symbolism in her artwork that leads her audience to believe she is working towards an outer goal, a feminist movement. Although many of her flower paintings indeed look like a woman’s intimates from an angle, none can be said more true of than Grey Line with Black, Blue, and Yellow. O 'Keeffe makes an interesting statement in associating the vagina with a flower: “The vagina is to humanity what a flower is to nature: it is life-giving, beautiful, and fragile, yet resilient”. Art and sex have been two intercorrelated topics for centuries. Once the idea of that can be grasped, being able to peel away the layers of color and shape to discover the hidden subtext can lead to a universal insight for how the general population views art in its truly erotic form; hidden beneath the coating of paint. For art to be understood, it needs be stripped. In conclusion, O’Keeffe was certainly a woman who wished to remain one in herself and of herself. The artwork she created that even slightly resembled another person’s style or piece she would trash and start over; the artwork can only reflect her. For anyone to understand her work, her background, her birth, her time, and ideals need to be taken into account as well. Art is not always two dimensional on canvas, it reaches deeper than the bare eye can see, we all just need to comprehend it on a different
Not following any specific artistic movement of her time, O’Keeffe experimented with abstracting motifs from nature. She practiced realism to produce works that emphasized the primary forms of nature in a cropped photograph method she learned from photographer, Paul Strand. Many critics assume there is hidden symbolism in her artwork that leads her audience to believe she is working towards an outer goal, a feminist movement. Although many of her flower paintings indeed look like a woman’s intimates from an angle, none can be said more true of than Grey Line with Black, Blue, and Yellow. O 'Keeffe makes an interesting statement in associating the vagina with a flower: “The vagina is to humanity what a flower is to nature: it is life-giving, beautiful, and fragile, yet resilient”. Art and sex have been two intercorrelated topics for centuries. Once the idea of that can be grasped, being able to peel away the layers of color and shape to discover the hidden subtext can lead to a universal insight for how the general population views art in its truly erotic form; hidden beneath the coating of paint. For art to be understood, it needs be stripped. In conclusion, O’Keeffe was certainly a woman who wished to remain one in herself and of herself. The artwork she created that even slightly resembled another person’s style or piece she would trash and start over; the artwork can only reflect her. For anyone to understand her work, her background, her birth, her time, and ideals need to be taken into account as well. Art is not always two dimensional on canvas, it reaches deeper than the bare eye can see, we all just need to comprehend it on a different