See Georgia O’Keeffe Seeing

Griselda Pollock (Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art) has written for the catalogue of a major exhibition of American artist Georgia O’Keeffe at Tate Modern which opened on 6 July.

With no works by O’Keeffe in UK public collections, this exhibition is a rare chance to see the beauty and skill of her remarkable paintings outside the US.

Feminist art historian Griselda Pollock will explore Georgia O’Keeffe’s work in a talk on 20 September at the Starr Cinema, Tate Modern (6.30pm). The talk, Show me no Flowers! The Challenges of Seeing Georgia O’Keeffe Seeing, will be repeated on 21 September at the University of Leeds (4.00pm).

The work of Georgia O’Keeffe has been approached through many lenses over the twentieth century, with conflicting readings stressing the sexuality of her images. Offering a feminist perspective of how O’Keeffe’s work has been reduced by these discussions, art historian Griselda Pollock will explore how paying close attention to the things of the world structured her life and way of making art.

Griselda Pollock said:

‘My talk seeks to challenge the repeated banalities about the work of O’Keeffe, uttered as much in the feminist field as in the mainstream critical field.

‘Using the methodologies I have been developing over forty years to ‘see’ the work of artists who are women, I will offer close readings of the early works in order to develop a critical vocabulary through which to explore vision and abstraction as the project of O’Keeffe’s seeing.’

More information about the talks can be found here.

Griselda has also contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue: Seeing Georgia O’Keeffe Seeing.

See Tate website for full information about the exhibition and associated events.

Image: Detail from Georgia O’Keeffe Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 1932 (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas USA © 2016 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/DACS, London. Photograph by Edward C. Robison III)