Georgia O'Keeffe

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VOICE ONE:

I'm Gwen Outen.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Steve Ember with People in America in VOA Special
English. Today we tell about one of the greatest painters of the
twentieth century, Georgia O'Keeffe.

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VOICE ONE:

America has produced many great painters in the past one-hundred
years. Georgia O'Keeffe is one of the most popular and easily
recognized artists. People do not mistake her work for anyone
else's. People can immediately identify her paintings of huge,
colorful flowers or bones in dream-like deserts.

Georgia O'Keeffe said she did not know how she got the idea to be
an artist. But, she said, the idea came early. She remembered
announcing when she was twelve years old that she planned to be an
artist.

VOICE TWO:

Georgia was born in eighteen eighty seven, the second of seven
children. Her parents were successful farmers in the middle western
state of Wisconsin.

Georgia's mother also had cultural interests. She made sure that
Georgia and her sisters studied art, in addition to their usual
school subjects. By the time Georgia was sixteen, the O'Keeffe
family had moved to Williamsburg, Virginia.

After Georgia finished school, she
attended the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. Georgia was
especially pleased with the help she got from her teacher, John
Vanderpoel. She later wrote that John Vanderpoel was one of the few
real teachers she knew.

VOICE ONE:

In nineteen-oh-seven, O'Keeffe began a year at the Art Students
League in New York City. The famous painter William Merritt Chase
was one of her teachers. Chase had a great influence on O'Keeffe's
early artistic development. She described him as fresh, full of
energy and fierce. She seemed to understand and agree with his style
of painting.

Then, in nineteen-oh-eight, Georgia O'Keeffe left the world of
fine art. She moved back to Chicago and worked in the advertising
business. She drew pictures of products to be sold. Her parents had
been struggling financially for some time in Virginia. Later, her
mother became sick with tuberculosis. Some art historians suspect
these were the main reasons Georgia O'Keeffe spent four years in
business instead of continuing her studies.

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VOICE TWO:

In nineteen twelve, O'Keeffe returned to art school at the
University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Artist and teacher Arthur
Wesley Dow taught that art should fill space in a beautiful way.
This theory influenced and changed her work. O'Keefe also learned
about the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. He wanted artists to
represent the inner spirit in outer things. O'Keeffe considered
Kandinsky's writings a treasure. She read them throughout her life.

VOICE ONE:

In nineteen fifteen, Georgia O'Keeffe decided that much of what
she had been taught in art school was of little value. She decided
to hang recent work she had done on the wall of her home. She
examined it and did not find herself in the art. She wrote that she
had been taught to work like others. She decided then that she would
not spend her life doing what had already been done.

Georgia O'Keeffe began to search for her own style. She used only
charcoal, the black material made from burned wood. In her book
about her life, she wrote that she decided to limit herself to
charcoal until she found she really needed color to do what she
needed to do. She wrote that six months later she found she needed
the color blue. She used it for a watercolor painting she called
"Blue Lines."

VOICE TWO:

Georgia O'Keeffe had met the famous art critic and photographer
Alfred Stieglitz (STEEG-lits) at his New York City gallery in
nineteen-oh-eight. Their friendship grew as they wrote letters to
each other. In nineteen fifteen, O'Keeffe told a friend that she
wanted her art to please Alfred Stieglitz more than anyone else.

That friend showed O'Keeffe's
charcoal drawings to Stieglitz. Stieglitz liked her drawings enough
to show them in his art gallery, called Two Ninety One.

VOICE ONE:

Alfred Stieglitz was a major force behind shows of Georgia
O'Keeffe's work for the next twenty-five years. Her first individual
show at his gallery was well received. She sold her first piece at
that show in nineteen seventeen.

Stieglitz became O'Keeffe's strongest supporter. Seven years
later he became her husband. He was twenty-four years older than his
new wife.

The relationship between Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz
was not an easy one. O'Keeffe once said that to her "he was much
more wonderful in his work than as a human being." But, she also
said she loved him for what seemed "clear and bright and wonderful."
The two remained married until his death in nineteen forty six.

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VOICE TWO:

Georgia O'Keeffe also had a long love relationship with the
southwestern part of the United States. The desert environment was
the subject of many of her paintings. O'Keeffe had moved to the
state of Texas when she was twenty-five. She accepted a two-year
position as supervisor of art in the public schools of Amarillo,
Texas.

Later, she taught in a small town. She wrote about long walks on
narrow paths in a canyon near that town. The dangerous climbs in and
out of the canyon were like nothing she had known before. She wrote
that many paintings came from experiences like that.

In one such painting, the canyon is shown as a huge deep hole of
many colors -- reds, oranges and yellows. It looks as if it is on
fire. The canyon fills most of the picture. A small area of blue sky
in the distance lends additional depth to the picture.

VOICE ONE:

In nineteen thirty, Georgia
O'Keeffe began spending most of her summers in the state of New
Mexico. She called it "the faraway." She painted big pictures of
desert flowers and the high rocky hills. She also began to paint
pictures of the bones she found during walks near her summer home.
Most of her paintings share the qualities of largeness of subject
and richness of color.

The artist discussed those two qualities in her book, called
"Georgia O'Keefe." She wrote that color is more exact in meaning
than words. Later, she wrote that she found she could say things
with color and shape that she could not express in words.

She also spoke of a special need to paint her subjects larger
than they are in life. She seemed to want to force people to see
more deeply into objects such as flowers. She tried to show the
different shapes and colors within a single flower. The artist said
she would make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what she saw
in flowers.

VOICE TWO:

O'Keeffe was angered by some criticism of her work over the
years. She rejected critics' claims that there was deep sexual
meaning in her paintings of flowers. She said that people linked
their own experience of a flower to her paintings. She suggested
that critics wrote about her flower paintings as if they knew what
she was seeing and thinking. But, she said, they did not know.

Georgia O'Keeffe always argued that what others think of the
artist's work is not important. She once wrote to a friend, "...
I'll do as I please."

VOICE ONE:

Georgia O'Keeffe bought her first house in New Mexico in nineteen
forty. After Alfred Stieglitz died, she moved to "the faraway'"
permanently. She lived in New Mexico for the rest of her life.

In the early nineteen seventies, O'Keeffe began losing her sight
because of an eye disease. She stopped working with oil paints, but
continued to produce watercolor paintings.

Around the same time, she met a young artist who would become
very important to her. Juan Hamilton made pottery, objects of clay.
He became O'Keeffe's assistant and friend. They also travelled
together. But in the early nineteen-eighties Georgia O'Keeffe's
health failed severely. She died in nineteen-eighty-six. She was
ninety-eight.

VOICE TWO:

Georgia O'Keefe received many honors during her long life.
President Gerald Ford presented her with the Medal of Freedom in
nineteen-seventy-seven. Eight years later, President Ronald Reagan
awarded her the National Medal of Arts. Students and experts
continue to study and write about her work.

Her paintings are shown around the world. And, more than
one-million people have visited the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in New
Mexico since it opened in nineteen-ninety-seven.

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VOICE ONE:

This program was written by Caty Weaver. It was produced by Lawan
Davis. I'm Gwen Outen.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Steve Ember. Listen again next week for People In America
in VOA Special English.