I don’t Georgia O’Keefe liked that interpenetration of her work as being genitalia. I’m it’s a close up of where the reproductive organs of a flower are but O’Keefe was strongly against that interpretation of her art.

greater-than-the-sword:

littlebluebarista:

greater-than-the-sword:

I’m gonna need a source on that because I saw one or two and they sure looked like, ya know

I could see it

She made close ups of flowers, mostly things like poppies, calla lillies, and irises. She said that the reason she made them so close up was that people tend to disregard flowers at first. But when they actually take the time to notice them, they brush their petals, smell them, bring them close to their face. In painting such large scale images of flowers, she wished to convey this ideal.

A lot of men in the 20s and 30s saw these paintings and immediately put a sexual connotation to them despite her vigorously denying any sort of Freudian connotation. She wrote a letter to her friend Mable Dodge Luhan in hope that she could write something about her that would counter the erotic associations with her work.

“I thought you could write something about me that men can’t – What I want written – I do not know – I have no definite idea of what it should be. – but a woman who has lived many things and who sees lines and colors as an expression of living – might say something that a man can’t – I feel there is something unexplored about woman that only a woman can explore – Men have done all they can do about it. Does that mean anything to you – or doesn’t it?”

—Georgia O’Keeffe, In a letter to Mabel Dodge Luhan, in 1925

Huh.