In Her “New Yorks,” Georgia O’Keeffe Finds Where Discernability Falls Apart

The widespread understanding of Georgia O’Keeffe’s oeuvre is incomplete. The great modernist abstractionist is, rightfully so, galvanized as a painter of abstract floral compositions. Closely cropped compositions of flora, rendered in hard-edged oil paint or watercolor, are the titular artworks associated with the artist’s name. They are remarkable, but much like the compositions themselves, they do not show the artist in her entirety. Beyond her flora paintings, O’Keeffe has a prolific and prodigious career in landscape and cityscape painting—the subject of “Georgia O’Keeffe: My New Yorks” now on at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

This exhibition functions as a kind of retrospective—which is to say, the artworks proceed chronologically through a five-year span of O’Keeffe’s life, beginning in 1924 when O’Keeffe and her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, moved into the Shelton Hotel, then the world’s tallest residential skyscraper. The exhibition begins with the paintings of nature O’Keeffe was making immediately prior to this move to elevation, like Pattern of Leaves (1923)—a close-up of leaves featuring O’Keeffe’s hallmarks: sensuous, flowing lines, overlapping shapes and measured use of color.

In the next room hangs The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y. (1926)—a street-level perspective of the skyscraper in which O’Keeffe lived. Painted around midday in silhouette, the building is a looming gray mass softened as the sun peeks around and partially swallows it with its blinding rays. The exhibition ends with artworks following O’Keeffe’s move to Santa Fe, NM like Cow’s Skull with Calico Roses (1931)—a still-life of the eponymous objects rendered with O’Keeffe’s trademark sensitivity and softness. Providing transitions into and out of New York bookends the exhibition, elegantly framing this brief but extraordinary chapter in O’Keeffe’s life and career not as an aberration but as an integral part of a throughline.

Despite O’Keeffe’s frequent use of the still-life, abstraction is the core of her practice, as seen in New York – Night (Madison Avenue) (1926). This nearly all-white painting is a simple composition of intersecting lines and cloudy shadows. Completely devoid of recognizable pictorial elements, the title of this painting points to its inspiration as a view of an arterial avenue in New York, as seen from above, its details obscured by height and lack of illumination. While drawing from the observable world, O’Keeffe was always analyzing the ways discernability falls apart.

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Scrutiny leads not to greater definition and understanding but a collapse of them. Abstraction is not an intentional step into undefinition but an eventuality of close examination. This phenomenon is an approach that should be applied to O’Keeffe herself, as exemplified by the first artwork encountered in this exhibition: New York Street with Moon (1925). One of many cityscapes in the High’s show, it debuted in a group exhibition organized by Alfred Stieglitz and his cohort, although it very nearly was excluded. While O’Keeffe was to be included, Stieglitz was outspoken that she present one of her floral paintings, believing that she should “leave paintings of the city to the men.” In an admirable moment of defiance, O’Keeffe refused to submit to Stieglitz’s opinions and chose to exhibit New York Street with Moon.

O’Keeffe’s defiance of Stieglitz and the High Museum’s exhibition unravel the widespread (mis)understanding of the artist’s oeuvre, proving the futility of attempting to rigidly define any one subject. While this unspooling can certainly lead to any number of possible reinterpretations, this exhibition points a way forward. Focusing on a seemingly erroneous chapter in O’Keeffe’s life, this exhibition presents masterful artworks that are interrelated but markedly separate from her more popular artworks. As this exhibition shows, it is within these deviations and miscellanea that often the most fruitful work can be found, if only preconceived notions can be dispelled.

“Georgia O’Keeffe: My New Yorks” is on view at the High Museum of Art through February 16, 2025.