Georgia O'Keeffe, Tate Modern ★★★★★
Tate Modern Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition uproots Freudian interpretation and shows the artist's true scope
Georgia O’Keeffe Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie's II. 1930 Oil on canvas mounted on board 24 1/4 x 36 1/4 (61.6 x 92.1)Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Gift of The Burnett Foundation © Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
At this major Tate Modern exhibition of Georgia O’Keefe paintings, you may be forgiven for wondering: where have all the flowers gone?
This is the first chance the public has had to see the work of American artist Georgia O’Keeffe in a British gallery in over 20 years.
And there is no more fitting host than the Tate Modern. Its recent extension includes more female artists than ever. Following exhibitions of Yayoi Kusuma and Agnes Martin, Frances Morris, the Director, continues to honour women.
To Morris it’s an “incredibly revelatory installation”. Revelatory it certainly is for those who thought O’Keeffe was either brazenly or innocently preoccupied with painting sexually suggestive flowers: they make up less than 5% of O’Keeffe’s artistic output. Nevertheless, they have defined her in the public imagination, not least Jimson Weed, which broke all records for the sale of a painting by a female artist in 2014 when it sold for $44.4 million, more than twice the previous record. It's in the small room dedicated to O'Keeffe's flower paintings.
So what’s left when we uproot this feminist interpretation, as difficult to shift as Jimson Weed? We get American apples, desert doorways, bleached bones and pleasingly creased landscapes.
After a disappointingly drab first room, the exhibition unpacks O’Keeffe. She loved the landscapes of New Mexico and painted series after series of their creased hills. The final room shows her biggest, most abstract landscapes as seen from planes. These last paintings come from a place of high freedom, a metaphoric escape from interpretation. The abstract The Sky Above The Clouds is dreamy, escapist and excellent.
Because we are used to the bombastic and suggestive, the reality of O’Keeffe is somewhat disappointing – the works are smaller for not all being larger-than life flowers. Instead we have light, dreamlike landscape where bones are just bones, painted because she liked their shapes.
It’s greater in scope, more complex, more interesting. We’ve lost a brazen feminist icon and found an artist.
This is the first chance the public has had to see the work of American artist Georgia O’Keeffe in a British gallery in over 20 years.
And there is no more fitting host than the Tate Modern. Its recent extension includes more female artists than ever. Following exhibitions of Yayoi Kusuma and Agnes Martin, Frances Morris, the Director, continues to honour women.
To Morris it’s an “incredibly revelatory installation”. Revelatory it certainly is for those who thought O’Keeffe was either brazenly or innocently preoccupied with painting sexually suggestive flowers: they make up less than 5% of O’Keeffe’s artistic output. Nevertheless, they have defined her in the public imagination, not least Jimson Weed, which broke all records for the sale of a painting by a female artist in 2014 when it sold for $44.4 million, more than twice the previous record. It's in the small room dedicated to O'Keeffe's flower paintings.
So what’s left when we uproot this feminist interpretation, as difficult to shift as Jimson Weed? We get American apples, desert doorways, bleached bones and pleasingly creased landscapes.
After a disappointingly drab first room, the exhibition unpacks O’Keeffe. She loved the landscapes of New Mexico and painted series after series of their creased hills. The final room shows her biggest, most abstract landscapes as seen from planes. These last paintings come from a place of high freedom, a metaphoric escape from interpretation. The abstract The Sky Above The Clouds is dreamy, escapist and excellent.
Because we are used to the bombastic and suggestive, the reality of O’Keeffe is somewhat disappointing – the works are smaller for not all being larger-than life flowers. Instead we have light, dreamlike landscape where bones are just bones, painted because she liked their shapes.
It’s greater in scope, more complex, more interesting. We’ve lost a brazen feminist icon and found an artist.
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| What | Georgia O'Keeffe, Tate Modern |
| Where | Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG | MAP |
| Nearest tube | Southwark (underground) |
| When |
06 Jul 16 – 30 Oct 16, 10.00–18.00 Sunday – Thursday, 10.00–22.00 Friday – Saturday |
| Price | £19 |
| Website | Click here for more details |