I hate going to the MET but for some reason I end up going there each year for the past five years. This time it was no different the experience was dreadful, but since the project required it I abided by it. One of the many reasons that I hate the Met is because it’s not easy to navigate and I hate asking for directions. But I swallowed up my pride and asked for the direction to the modern and contemporary art. As the directions stated I went through the roman art made a right to the African art and going through the whole exabit it was at the very end of the first floor. After I finally arrived at the destination and started looking around nothing seemed quite impressive which was odd because it was packed with visitors. I arrived front of the black iris and started looking at mainly because it was one of the few paintings there that didn’t had people crowding it.
The work I decided to look at was Black Iris III by Georgia O’ Keeffe. The painting dates back to 1926 and is an oil painting. It shows a magnified image of a flower, with all of its dimensions enlarged far beyond its original realize proportions. Since the picture is almost as if it zoomed in, she puts great attention to the details which captures the attention of her audience and which was the other main reason why I was drawn in by this work of art. She emphasizes on type of detail that could be easily overlooked at a first glance, which could be her reason for drawing this piece out of proportion to such size. She wanted to draw attention and make her audience see the flower from her eyes. How she perceived it. So the viewer who wouldn’t take second glance at a flower is drawn in to take a closer look.
O’Keeffe is one of the most significant artists of the twentieth century who had iconic contribution to American modernism. She was born on November 15, 1877 and was the second of seven children. She grew up on a farm near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She studied at Art institute of Chicago from 1905 to 1906 and the Art Students League in New York from 1907 to 1908. There she learned the techniques of traditional realist painting. But the greatest influence on her as an artist came from Arthur Wesley Dow. It was his revolutionary ideas that made her one of the very first American artists the practiced pure abstraction. (okeeffemuseum.org).
One can say before the 19thcentury art lacked imagination, which was introduced to the world of art in terms of modern art. Modernism challenged the traditional way of thinking and depicting art as you see in the real world. They started drawing from their imagination, how they perceive the world not simply see. Thus, we get themes like abstraction, impressionism, expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. These are not natural rather unnatural way of viewing the world. We see this in Black Iris III by O’Keeffe as natural flower is painted out of proportion way larger than its original size. Showcasing the them abstraction and impressionism. Who knew what she originally intended for her audience to perceive but it does a great job in cultivating their attention.
One question is why flower petals because I see them reoccurring in her other works as well.
Kulvir,
I’m sorry you don’t like the Met. Maybe you should have visited MoMA instead? In any case, you’ve chosen a beautiful work by Georgia O’Keefe. As you suggest, one of the most Modernist features of this work is the way that O’Keefe is playing around with scale. She’s recording what she sees in nature (not producing work out of her imagination, like a Surrealist might), but she is challenging our expectations by making something small so very large. In doing this, she also manages to take something very familiar (in this case, a flower) and render it as something strange or new, by presenting it in the close-up, enlarged way.
JS