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拍品专文
Georgia O'Keeffe's magnified images of flowers became her best known and most celebrated paintings. The years she dedicated to the exploration and development of floral themes yielded some of the most important works of her oeuvre and enabled O'Keeffe to synthesize her interest in the depiction of natural objects and her Modernist impulses in the use of color and form. In Canna Red and Orange, O'Keeffe creates a perfect balance of form and color, emphasizing the organic harmonies of the flower and of nature.
O'Keeffe began painting flower pictures in 1918 and they were shown for the first time by Alfred Stieglitz in 1923. By 1924, she was painting large-scale flower paintings, which were exhibited the following year at Anderson Galleries. When these works were shown, they caused a sensation, receiving both positive and negative reviews. Even Stieglitz's reaction when he first saw Petunia No. 2 (1924, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico) in her studio was, "Well, Georgia, I don't know how you are going to get away with anything like that--you aren't planning to show it, are you?" Nicholas Callaway writes, "Many found [the flower paintings] to be unabashedly sensual, in some cases overtly erotic. Others perceived them as spiritually chaste...Added to the shock of their...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...[The flower paintings] were extraordinarily controversial and sought-after, and made their maker a celebrity. It was the flowers that begat the O'Keeffe legend in the heady climate of the 1920s." (Georgia O'Keeffe: One Hundred Flowers, New York, 1989, n.p.)
Canna Red and Orange is at once an objective interpretation of a blossom 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 are the source of their strength. Whereas many Modernists such as Charles Sheeler and John Marin turned to the industrial sector for guidance and inspiration in subject matter, O'Keeffe embraced the natural world.
The present work is an image of an efflorescent flower. The petals curl and twist over each other, transforming the bloomed flower into rapturous forms. The curves of the petals are transformed into expanses of modulated color in vibrant crimson and orange. She magnifies the flower forcing the leaves and petals to the edges of the canvas and cropping them, simplifying the flower into forms and patterns. This removes all sense of distance and space from the composition, adding to the heightened reality of the blossom which is transformed by the artist from a commonplace flower into something more insistent and profound.
Although Canna Red and Orange is smaller than O'Keeffe's large-scale canvases of flowers, its size is typical of her earliest floral paintings. On a more intimate scale, the smaller works, through the ingenious manipulation of color, form and composition, carry as powerful a visual impact as the larger floral paintings. By magnifying a small, traditionally feminine subject, O'Keeffe creates a bold abstraction. Simultaneously monumental and intimate, the work reflects the artist's dedication to transform into a Modernist idiom the beauty and wonder in nature.
Much has been written about O'Keeffe's relationship with Stieglitz and the influence each had on the other's work and it is likely that photography--both Stieglitz's and others--had some impact on her paintings. O'Keeffe employed the photographic techniques of the detailed close-up and magnified image, as well as of the cropped edges of the picture plane. Photographer Edward Weston used the camera's capacity to photograph still life compositions, turning natural forms into abstract images, a contemporary parallel to the flower images of O'Keeffe. Weston's still lifes also elicited varied interpretations. Seen as both sensual and spiritual, these photographs and O'Keeffe's flower paintings manifest the same duality.
O'Keeffe applied Modernist aesthetics to natural forms as a way of drawing the viewer's attention to their often unappreciated beauty. Explaining why she chose to paint flowers, she said, "When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it--it's your world for a moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not." (as quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe: One Hundred Flowers, n.p.) It is one of her lasting achievements--perhaps her best known--that she could at once convey in a flower the intimate and the monumental, and to transform one of nature's most delicate objects into a powerful artistic statement.
O'Keeffe began painting flower pictures in 1918 and they were shown for the first time by Alfred Stieglitz in 1923. By 1924, she was painting large-scale flower paintings, which were exhibited the following year at Anderson Galleries. When these works were shown, they caused a sensation, receiving both positive and negative reviews. Even Stieglitz's reaction when he first saw Petunia No. 2 (1924, Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico) in her studio was, "Well, Georgia, I don't know how you are going to get away with anything like that--you aren't planning to show it, are you?" Nicholas Callaway writes, "Many found [the flower paintings] to be unabashedly sensual, in some cases overtly erotic. Others perceived them as spiritually chaste...Added to the shock of their...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...[The flower paintings] were extraordinarily controversial and sought-after, and made their maker a celebrity. It was the flowers that begat the O'Keeffe legend in the heady climate of the 1920s." (Georgia O'Keeffe: One Hundred Flowers, New York, 1989, n.p.)
Canna Red and Orange is at once an objective interpretation of a blossom 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 are the source of their strength. Whereas many Modernists such as Charles Sheeler and John Marin turned to the industrial sector for guidance and inspiration in subject matter, O'Keeffe embraced the natural world.
The present work is an image of an efflorescent flower. The petals curl and twist over each other, transforming the bloomed flower into rapturous forms. The curves of the petals are transformed into expanses of modulated color in vibrant crimson and orange. She magnifies the flower forcing the leaves and petals to the edges of the canvas and cropping them, simplifying the flower into forms and patterns. This removes all sense of distance and space from the composition, adding to the heightened reality of the blossom which is transformed by the artist from a commonplace flower into something more insistent and profound.
Although Canna Red and Orange is smaller than O'Keeffe's large-scale canvases of flowers, its size is typical of her earliest floral paintings. On a more intimate scale, the smaller works, through the ingenious manipulation of color, form and composition, carry as powerful a visual impact as the larger floral paintings. By magnifying a small, traditionally feminine subject, O'Keeffe creates a bold abstraction. Simultaneously monumental and intimate, the work reflects the artist's dedication to transform into a Modernist idiom the beauty and wonder in nature.
Much has been written about O'Keeffe's relationship with Stieglitz and the influence each had on the other's work and it is likely that photography--both Stieglitz's and others--had some impact on her paintings. O'Keeffe employed the photographic techniques of the detailed close-up and magnified image, as well as of the cropped edges of the picture plane. Photographer Edward Weston used the camera's capacity to photograph still life compositions, turning natural forms into abstract images, a contemporary parallel to the flower images of O'Keeffe. Weston's still lifes also elicited varied interpretations. Seen as both sensual and spiritual, these photographs and O'Keeffe's flower paintings manifest the same duality.
O'Keeffe applied Modernist aesthetics to natural forms as a way of drawing the viewer's attention to their often unappreciated beauty. Explaining why she chose to paint flowers, she said, "When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it--it's your world for a moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not." (as quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe: One Hundred Flowers, n.p.) It is one of her lasting achievements--perhaps her best known--that she could at once convey in a flower the intimate and the monumental, and to transform one of nature's most delicate objects into a powerful artistic statement.