Part 1: Visual Analysis of Georgia Okeeffe’s “Flower Abstraction”

“Flower Abstraction” by Georgia O’Keeffe, created in 1924, is currently on display at The Whitney Museum of American Art. This is a vertically oriented 48 1/8 × 30 n oil painting on canvas. O’Keeffe is considered to be “The mother of American modernism” which is the style in which this painting was created. Although this piece is an abstraction, the subject matter of this piece is a flower, as O’Keeffe states in the title. More specifically it is a cropped close-up of the petals and stigma. The composition is centered, and it is similar when split down the center vertically but is not exactly symmetrical. This piece is successful primarily because of its use of atmospheric perspective, shading, color, and strategic placement of textural elements.

 

The color scheme of this piece can most simply be described as complementary. O’Keeffe uses primarily pastel tints of pink and green. She uses the pink more on the left side than the right and uses a darker shade of the same coral toned pink to add details to the petal located in the middle left. The earthy, pastel green is used to balance the pink and add contrast. The green tones are located mostly on the right side but O’Keeffe uses a mix slightly green-tinted white throughout the middle. She also uses a very small amount of purple and yellow. The purple and yellow add another layer to this color scheme; the purple is very light and is used most in the bottom half of the painting. The top middle is where the light greenish-yellow is used so strategically. The purple and yellow tones also play off of each other to create a more complex and interesting color scheme. 

 

This piece uses atmospheric perspective, as seen in the flower petals. The outer petals toward the bottom are more clear than the stigma in the middle of the flower because they are closer to the viewer than the lesser defined stigma in the center of the flower. She also uses shading to give volume and depth to the painting, the viewer can see this most clearly in the half-circle shapes towards the middle that take the form of a sphere because of the shading around the edges blending into a lighter shade towards the center. The majority of this artwork has a very smooth texture, but there is one very distinct place where this is contrasted. In the left middle of the painting, there is one petal with a silky ruffled texture, this brings the viewers attention to that petal but is balanced with the use of a strong shadow directly opposite it. 

 

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