One of the texts written on the wall of the exhibition (I should ask my grandmother, but I think there was a time where nothing was written on the walls of exhibitions? Anybody?) talked of Georgia O'Keefe paintings' "gently pulsating... " something something. Gently?! O'Keefe? Some of her work might be pulsating, but there is strictly nothing gentle about Georgia O'Keefe. Thank god. Her vibrant passion is everywhere.
Every time I see I read I feel women's passion which has been so under expressed over the centuries, I vibrate in unison: The Brontë Sisters, Frida Kahlo, Jane Campion, Agota Kristof. Their passion is different, I think, from the male version, though this is dangerous terrain that can slip quickly into stereotypes. A feminine passion with nothing gentle about it, but strength, transcendence, intensity. And for O'keefe's work, drama, and daring, present in so many of her paintings. 
We are often served over and over the same type of paintings by one artist. For O'Keefe, the desert and the flowers. But there is so much more to her work, so many paintings which don't look like "an O'Keefe" where she tries, she experiments, she probes. A company which produced fabric asked her to create paintings in the 1920s to advertise for their wares, something in the erotic vein of her abstract paintings. I was floored. Which company nowadays would ask an artist to create paintings with obvious references to the female sexual organs? Such a far cry to the exploitative approach of American Apparel's teen porn. It's discouraging sometimes to feel we're going backward in terms of feminine emancipation and of breaking away from stereotypes.
That's it. There. Full stop.
Contributed by - Arabella Hutter
No comments:
Post a Comment