Georgia O'Keefe at Tate Modern

I had of course heard of Georgia O'Keeffe prior to this exhibition but I don't think I'd ever seen her work in person before.  By reputation she is most famous for flower paintings that look, well they look like vaginas.  She always denied that this was deliberate and this exhibitions purpose was to set out that she is more than that.  And she is. And they have succeeded.

It is a good exhibition, well laid out and well curated and you should go and see it.  While still present the art speak of the labeling seems to have been dialed down a notch.   It is also a large exhibition, some 13 rooms so it is going to take you some time to go around it.  It is on until 30th October and I may very well go and see it again.

O'Keeffe is extremely talented,  on display are water colours, charcoal drawings, oil paintings and pastels.  She is masterly with all of them.   In the first room you are shown early water colour and abstract charcoal work. Both of these show elements that persist in all of her work, a deceptive simplicity, a very good use of line and a fine deployment of gradation of tone.  This is worth looking out for.  You think something (like for example Red and Orange Streak) has solid blocks of colour but in fact they are often subtly blended, flowing into another colour, or gently mottled. The style of thick, smoothly applied paint is something she seems to have arrived at early.

The second room has more abstract work.  All striking and absorbing including the distinctly yonic work to the left.  By this point though you can already see that O'Keeffe is much more than this.  The curators have done their work.  My wife made a good point about this. If O'Keeffe had been male maybe this would have been less of an issue.  Being a woman though the male dominated art world of the time (and now) decides it must all be about the vagina.  The rest of her work becomes eclipsed by this. Eclipsed no longer!

The following room had photographs of O'Keeffe by her partner.  Now it is quite interesting to see what O'Keeffe looks like.  Not sure we need to see her naked and this leads to me to a point which once I spotted it has been irritating me ever since.  There a subtle sexism at work in these exhibitions.  It was the same with the Hepworth and Delaunay exhibitions.  The all feature work by their male partners.  This is not something you see when a male artist (like Picasso for example) is displayed.  There is always a justification for their inclusion, but I haven't come to see them.  No one has.  Why are they there? These women are titans of art.  They can stand on their own.   Particularly baffling was the inclusion of some second rate paintings by some burk who was a friend of her partners.  Go away I say.

Back to the work in hand.  There were of course some flower paintings and they are amazing and extraordinary. I was particularly struck by the vivid orange of the oriental poppies painting.   However there were other genres for which she is what she is well known but which she deserves to be.

There were some good still lives, the ones of pears and eggplant (aubergine) done in pastel are sublime.  My favourite pieces though were those done in New Mexico.  In the New Mexico landscape O'Keeffe seems to find a subject that really chimes with her style. Subtle and beguiling pieces.  Then we have paintings of skulls and bones.  These are not morbid but I can see why the shapes appeal,  in the same way the shapes of flowers did, to O'Keeffe.

One of the discoveries I was very pleased to make was of her paintings of these things called Kachina which are Native American spirit totems.  Not only are they very intriguing subjects they are represented in an excellent, reverential but also humorous way.  I like them very much, particularly in fact her charcoal drawings of them.

The exhibition finishes in a room with sky/cloud pictures taken as if from an air-plane. They are large pieces and act quite well as a palette cleanser before you are released back into the real world.

This is a very good show.  There are some very good pieces in their and pieces you will not have seen before. Go and see it.

Afterwards we went around the new extension to the Tate Modern, but more on that another time.