| Artist: | O'Keeffe, Georgia |
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|---|---|---|
| Title of Work: | Evening Star No. IV | |
| Date of Work: | 1917 | |
| Nationality: | American | |
| Context: | Biomorphic Abstraction | |
| Movement: | American Abstraction | |
| Medium: | Oil | |
| Subject: an evening star, which can be read as a representation of nature or as a pure abstraction. For O'Keeffe, the hidden drama of nature is not the underlying grid but a spiral, which uncoils with a biomorphic rhythm that signifies both the organic and the body. Style: "I look at nature and I see shapes." Her shapes unfold in a biomorphic way, with a curving, animated contour that may be hard-edged in its clarity of vision, but not geometric in form. Her biomorphic forms are more metamorphic, suggesting growth and regeneration. In color she uses a wider spectrum than Mondrian; here she relies on the primary colors, but she also utilizes green, the color Mondrian banished because he felt it was too closely associated with the outward appearance of nature. O'Keeffe's work is at once both representational and abstract. Context: O'Keeffe is arguably the first American to develop an abstracting style that was not directly derived from European models. She gives us a home-grown abstraction that comes from a close observation of nature rather than from fantasy. But what she paints is a world that did not exist before she painted it; in other words, she paints a personal vision more than a thing or object. And in the process she reveals new edges of vision. Like Mondrian, her image is not an illusionistic image of surface appearances, but an abstracted vision of the mystical inner construction of nature. Her abstract vision is less concerned with universals, though, and more engaged with the personal and unique moments of nature. For her nature is seen as abstract shapes and "felt" as interiorized body experiences (the "inner haptic"). | ||
