O'Keeffe Reimagined - STEVEN R. TABOR

O'Keeffe Re-imagined

What was she trying to say?

Georgia O'Keeffe is one of the artists in history whose work is often reduced to the single question: flowers or vaginas? She is best known for her large-scale studies of flowers, painted as if looking at them through a macro-lens. Since the early 1920s these paintings have often been interpreted erotically, despite O’Keeffe’s vigorous denial that her paintings were in any way sexual. The Freudian theory that her flower paintings were actually metaphoric studies of the vulva was, in fact, first put forward in 1919 by Alfred Stieglitz, the photographer who first promoted O’Keeffe’s work and later became her husband. In this series, images of O'Keeffe's flowers are blended with appropriated images of female vulva from the web.

If you'd like to see the full series, download the PDF catalogue here.