O'Keeffe Reimagined - STEVEN R. TABOR

O'Keeffe Re-imagined

What's in a name?

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 images of female vulva that have been appropriated from the web. This series re-imagines what Alfred Stieglitz might have envisaged in O'Keeffe's paintings, had he lived and worked in today's internet culture which leaves precious little to the imagination.

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