Wednesday, April 27, 2011

This painting is called "Rams Head With Hollyhock and Little Hills"and was created by Georgia O'Keeffe in 1935. This picture shows a cloudy, almost stormy-like sky with  low mountains and a floating skull with a white flower beside of it. During this time, O'Keeffe was involved in the feminist movement which began in the early 1920's. During this time, women were trying to find their place in the art world that was once dominated by men. This painting was painted during her time spent living in New Mexico, explaining the landscape and dead land of the desert area also known as "O'Keeffe Country." She had just ended her marriage to art dealer, Alfred Stieglitz, and the sky could be suggesting her storm beginning or maybe passing as she is free in New Mexico to paint as she pleases, although she is now alone at her new home, Ghost Ranch. She shows the power of nature throughout her art as she related this to her own life in her later years. This style of painting, using skulls and flowers, symbolizing life and death, became O'Keeffe's more popular subject and ended up being a style of art that we all know of her today. This painting became an icon for the feminist movement because of the power shown in the these series of paintings.

Monday, April 25, 2011

This is Georgia O'Keeffe's picture "Sky Above Clouds," created in 1962. This picture Georgia O'Keeffe created was during O'Keefe's early years where she returned to abstraction, which is present in many of her works while moving to New Mexico and after being involved with modernism which is what she is known for now through art history. This painting, created in the early 1960's, was inspired by airplane views as she was traveling back and forth between New Mexico and New York. This painting is one of a series of paintings created during this time period of her views of the world as she was looking down from the sky. These clouds are all altered throughout the picture, never having any two to be the same. These clouds show that not everything or everyone is the same or even what we think it is. The sky is show on two different horizons even though our view is shown on a higher plane. This painting shows how beautiful life is and how nothing is as we see it as she journeys to pursue her new life in New Mexico without her husband or marriage to Alfred Steiglitz, who held her back in some aspects of her career and even portraying her in a negative image. Overall, I believe that this picture shows the way that everything changes in someones life and how nothing is how it seems.