| Abstract |
Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O'Keeffe, companions in life and art in spite of a 23-year age differential, symbolized the unusual juxtapositions characteristic of the American modernist period. In this program, Professor Wanda Corn uses representative samples of O'Keeffe's paintings and Stieglitz's photographs to show the impact they had on each other and on the evolution of American art. Many of Stieglitz's 1600 photographs of O'Keeffe were 'carefully posed, cropped, and fluidly symbolic,' indicative of a creative collaboration between subject and photographer. O'Keeffe initially confined her modernist style of abstraction, unusual vantage point, and strong form and color to the traditionally female subject of flowers. But in the late 1920's, perhaps as an act of social and matrimonial defiance, she began to paint New York City skyscrapers, and later, in conjunction with yearly sojourns to New Mexico, she employed an increasingly surreal style in depicting landscapes, churches, and skulls, the latter dramatically symbolizing 'the rich tradition and cultural mix of the Southwest.' This conscious change in subject matter was a reflection of O'Keeffe's strong artistic spirit and her determination to reconnect with traditional America, to 'embrace the historical rural past with modernist techniques and perspectives,' and to gain recognition not as a female artist, but as an artist of the American Southwest. |
