Lot Essay
Black Iris II (Black Iris VI) of 1936 reveals the highly evocative and sensual overtones that are the hallmarks of Georgia O'Keeffe's finest flower paintings. In 1939, three years after completing Black Iris II (Black Iris VI), O'Keeffe wrote in About Myself, "A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower--the idea of flowers. You put out your hand to touch the flower--lean forward to smell it--maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking--or give it to someone to please them. Still--in a way--nobody sees a flower--really--it is so small--we haven't time--and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time. If I could paint the flower exactly as I see it no one would see what I see because I would paint it small like the flower is small. So I said to myself--I'll paint what I see--what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it." The personal association with flowers described by O'Keeffe underscores the powerful meaning that works such as Black Iris II (Black Iris VI) had for the artist.
O'Keeffe's magnified flower paintings are among the images most frequently associated with the artist. Black Iris II (Black Iris VI) reflects pictorial strategies that O'Keeffe had developed as an avant-garde American modernist: interest in a type of heightened realism that pushes an image to the edge of abstraction. The image is at once an objective interpretation of the blossom of a black bearded iris as well as a meditation on form and color. It is this near abstraction that evokes the mystical and spiritual qualities which O'Keeffe associated with her flowers and which is the source of their strength.
While form played a major role in O'Keeffe's artistic vision, color was of equal or greater significance. She wrote, "The meaning of a word--to me--is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Colors and shapes make a more definite statement than words. I write this because such odd things have been done about me with words. I have been often told what to paint. I am often amazed at the spoken and written word telling me what I have painted. I make this effort because no one else can know how my paintings happen."
Even her friend and fellow Modern painter Charles Demuth acknowledged the importance of color in O'Keeffe's work. In 1927 he wrote, "Flowers and flames. And colour. Colour as colour, not as volume, or light,--only as colour. The last mad throb of red just as it turns green, the ultimate shriek of orange calling upon all the blues of heaven for relief or for support; these Georgia O'Keeffe is able to use. In her canvases each colour almost regains the fun it must have felt within itself, on forming the first rain-bow."
In many of her works, and in particular her flower paintings, the color white has particular meaning for O'Keeffe, and throughout her career she experimented with the nuances of the color. Just as it does in many of her most important flower paintings, white plays a major role in Black Iris II (Black Iris VI). White modulates the form of the flower and suggests a neutral space in which the flower exists. Other tones--subtle pinks, mauves, blacks, grays and a shot of green at the base--combine to create a sensual, shimmering surface.
The sensuality--and near eroticism--implicit in O'Keeffe's enlarged flower paintings and in Black Iris II (Black Iris VI) has long been noted by the artist's critics and admirers. Nicholas Calloway writes, "A great hubbub arose among the public and the critics about the connotations of the flower paintings. Many found them to be unabashedly sensual, in some cases overtly erotic. Others perceived them as spiritually chaste. . . Added to the shock of their spectacular size, outrageous color, and scandalous (or sacred) shapes was the fact that these paintings had been created by a woman at a time when the art world was almost exclusively male. O'Keeffe had already attracted attention in the two earlier exhibits of her works at 291, and in Stieglitz's composite photographic portrait of her, including many nudes, first shown in 1921. The flower paintings further fueled the public's fascination with this woman who so freely exposed herself, and yet retained so much mystery. They were extraordinarily controversial and sought-after, and made their maker a celebrity. It is was the flowers that begat the O'Keeffe legend in the heady climate of the 1920s." (One Hundred Flowers, New York, 1989, n.p.)
This painting will be considered for inclusion in the forthcoming catalogue raisonn of the artist's work, a joint project of the National Gallery of Art and Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation with the assistance of the Burnett Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation. Author: Barbara Buhler Lynes.
O'Keeffe's magnified flower paintings are among the images most frequently associated with the artist. Black Iris II (Black Iris VI) reflects pictorial strategies that O'Keeffe had developed as an avant-garde American modernist: interest in a type of heightened realism that pushes an image to the edge of abstraction. The image is at once an objective interpretation of the blossom of a black bearded iris as well as a meditation on form and color. It is this near abstraction that evokes the mystical and spiritual qualities which O'Keeffe associated with her flowers and which is the source of their strength.
While form played a major role in O'Keeffe's artistic vision, color was of equal or greater significance. She wrote, "The meaning of a word--to me--is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Colors and shapes make a more definite statement than words. I write this because such odd things have been done about me with words. I have been often told what to paint. I am often amazed at the spoken and written word telling me what I have painted. I make this effort because no one else can know how my paintings happen."
Even her friend and fellow Modern painter Charles Demuth acknowledged the importance of color in O'Keeffe's work. In 1927 he wrote, "Flowers and flames. And colour. Colour as colour, not as volume, or light,--only as colour. The last mad throb of red just as it turns green, the ultimate shriek of orange calling upon all the blues of heaven for relief or for support; these Georgia O'Keeffe is able to use. In her canvases each colour almost regains the fun it must have felt within itself, on forming the first rain-bow."
In many of her works, and in particular her flower paintings, the color white has particular meaning for O'Keeffe, and throughout her career she experimented with the nuances of the color. Just as it does in many of her most important flower paintings, white plays a major role in Black Iris II (Black Iris VI). White modulates the form of the flower and suggests a neutral space in which the flower exists. Other tones--subtle pinks, mauves, blacks, grays and a shot of green at the base--combine to create a sensual, shimmering surface.
The sensuality--and near eroticism--implicit in O'Keeffe's enlarged flower paintings and in Black Iris II (Black Iris VI) has long been noted by the artist's critics and admirers. Nicholas Calloway writes, "A great hubbub arose among the public and the critics about the connotations of the flower paintings. Many found them to be unabashedly sensual, in some cases overtly erotic. Others perceived them as spiritually chaste. . . Added to the shock of their spectacular size, outrageous color, and scandalous (or sacred) shapes was the fact that these paintings had been created by a woman at a time when the art world was almost exclusively male. O'Keeffe had already attracted attention in the two earlier exhibits of her works at 291, and in Stieglitz's composite photographic portrait of her, including many nudes, first shown in 1921. The flower paintings further fueled the public's fascination with this woman who so freely exposed herself, and yet retained so much mystery. They were extraordinarily controversial and sought-after, and made their maker a celebrity. It is was the flowers that begat the O'Keeffe legend in the heady climate of the 1920s." (One Hundred Flowers, New York, 1989, n.p.)
This painting will be considered for inclusion in the forthcoming catalogue raisonn of the artist's work, a joint project of the National Gallery of Art and Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation with the assistance of the Burnett Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation. Author: Barbara Buhler Lynes.