O’Keeffe & Stieglitz Photography and Early American Modernism

O’Keeffe & Stieglitz

Photography

and

Early American Modernism

Alfred Stieglitz• Stieglitz begins as one of the

Pictorialist leaders in America• By the beginning of the 20th century

converts to support Strait Photography.

• He was instrumental in opening the doors to America for the avant-garde.

• He Published a magazine ( Camera works,1903-17).

• He also ran his own gallery ( Gallery 291, 1905-17) which showcased works by modern artists (i.e. Picasso, Matisse, & Cezanne) in America for the first time.

• Stieglitz arranged exhibits of O'Keeffe's works, helped sell her works.

The Asphalt Paver, 1892/1913

Pictorialism - A style of soft focus photograph, originating in Europe, which attempts to imitate painting.

In the New York Central Yards 1907

Monet, Saint-Lazare Train Station 1877

Pictorialism attempted to be accepted as an art form by trying to look like the accepted gallery styles like Impressionism.

September 1905

Haystack at Sunset 1891

The Steerage, 1907

Strait Photography• Resulting from a call to

"let photographs look like photographs," it was the first distinctly American style.

• Unlike Pictorialism it contains sharp focus, detail, and carefully planed compositions.

The Steerage, 1907

• One of Stieglitz’s hallmark photographs, The Steerage (1915), produces a very different effect.

• This is a photograph of working class people crowding two decks of a transatlantic steamer.

• The subjects are in sharp focus and the composition is inclined toward geometric elements.

Georgia O’Keeffe, 1933

Georgia O’Keeffe

• Her relationship with Stieglitz started out as an affair, but they eventually married.

• Stieglitz took over 300 photos of O’Keeffe.

• She established her reputation at 291, after America was introduced to the avant-garde at the famous 1913 Armory Show.

Georgia O’Keeffe

• At this time in America her work was considered by the establishment controversial & shocking.

• Eventually modern works like these in America became the new establishment, and N.Y would become the new center of the art world after Paris.

Black Iris, 1926

• Forms are always from nature no matter how distorted.

• Swooping forms of petals and stamen fill the entire canvas.

Black Iris, 1926

• Size heightens the importance of the otherwise traditional subject.

• Influenced by close-

up photography.

Oriental Poppies, 1927

• The compositions contain bold line, pure colour, and subtle tone.

Images like these take on the power and scope of a landscape.

Jack-in-the-Pulpit Series, 1930

• In 1930, Georgia O'Keeffe painted a series of six canvases depicting a jack-in-the-pulpit.

• The series begins with the striped and hooded bloom rendered with a botanist's care in naturalistic detail.

• It continues with successively more abstract and tightly focused depictions, and ends with the essence of the jack-in-the-pulpit.

• In this image a haloed black pistil stands alone against a black, purple, and gray field.

Jack-in-the-Pulpit, No.IV, 1930

• This work represents a midpoint in this process of concurrently increasing detail and abstraction.

• O'Keeffe consistently found her strongest inspiration in

nature. • She believed that the essence

of nature could be discovered in and through the refinement of form.

Jack-in-the-Pulpit, No. IV, 1930

• In the jack-in-the-pulpits, abstraction becomes a metaphor of, and an equivalent for, knowledge.

• The closest view of the flower yields an abstract image.

• The most profound knowledge of the subject reveals its abstract form.

• Her series was influenced by the European artist, Mondrian’s series of trees that contain a continuous evolution into abstraction.