O Keeffe And Hepworth: A Comparative Analysis

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Artists of the Modernist era responded to the relationship of body and landscape in many different ways. This essay will focus on the works of Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) and Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975) and will explore two works by each artist. A desire of the Modernist artist was the pursuit of pure forms and removal of extraneous detail that would encumber their vision of what the world should, or in fact did look like to them. As Honour and Flemming (2009) propose, the thought of seeking original elucidations to the issues that surrounded the production of paintings and sculpture helped to propel the movement forward. Modernist artists such as O’Keeffe and Hepworth helped to dispossess the theory that art needed be frivolous and representative. …show more content…

Through the use of enlarging specific areas and narrowing the viewers focus by eliminating any extraneous background detail. O’Keefe was able to produce a series of work that was, for the time, subtle, ambiguous and sexually charged. O’Keeffe’s Black Iris (1926) is one such piece that has, through its striking simplicity, both tonally and detail wise created a work that has the dynamism of a flower but the subtle invocation of female genitalia. Whether or not it is intentional remains to be seen, and as Breedlove (1986) discusses, while O’Keeffe was unhappy about the Freudian explication surrounding her work, the premise that still surrounds is that it is vulval in nature and that this theory prevails since the painting was first shown in …show more content…

It throws the ambiguity of the piece wide open and in doing so empowers women across all spheres, encouraging a confronting discussion about women, their bodies and their place in the world. Paintings such as Black Iris discuss that natural beauty is found in many forms, and as Seeberg (2002) notes, that a galaxy of ideas can be and that form can be incorporated into an individual object, which, can be viewed in many different ways and is always subjective to the viewer. Black Iris caused a commotion when it was first shown. A woman producing a body of work that resembled, according to the Freudian mind, female genitalia, of which as Breedlove (1986) discusses was deeply upsetting to O’Keeffe as the artwork was more often than not critiqued with what the artworks said about her rather than the work in general. It was for the time, a risk, but one that ultimately paid off. The colour palette of Black Iris is delicate. The dusky pinks,

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