The Poppy of Georgia O'Keeffe
(by Janine Pommy Vega) In the carmine extravagance the skirts of a Spanish dancer swirl flamenco rhythms, castanets exuberant dancer drumming her heels on a wooden floor staccato barks, deep intricate guitars the energy pulsing from the dark surrounds and enters The poppy is wide open her petals curve like the skirts of a mountain filled with the morning sun we climb and reaching the pinnacle shout like the flower in strict discipline, in eloquent satori in the wild grace of black and red. (from The Green Piano, David Godine Publishing, 2005) |
- O’Keeffe painted flowers before 1924, but she later enlarged their scale, so “even busy New Yorkers” would take time to look at them.
- In O’Keeffe’s era, women were often viewed in terms of their biology. A contemporary critic had once remarked that her flowers had “the air of self-portraits.”
- O'Keeffe's Poppy from 1927, more large and menacing than her previous flowers, might be seen as her response to critics who interpreted her previous work narrowly in terms of her sexuality / biology.
- O'Keeffe's husband and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz referred to this painting as “that wild red picture.”
(adapted from http://mfastpete.org/obj/poppy/)