Georgia O'Keeffe - Torso

Last updated
Georgia O'Keeffe - Torso (1918) by Alfred Stieglitz Georgia O'Keeffe--Torso MET DP232921.jpg
Georgia O'Keeffe - Torso (1918) by Alfred Stieglitz

Georgia O'Keeffe - Torso, also known as Georgia O'Keeffe - Nude, is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1918. It is one of the more than 300 photographs that he took of his future wife, the painter Georgia O'Keeffe. [1]

Contents

Description

Stieglitz took dozens of pictures of O'Keeffe's body, including her hands and her nude torso. The photograph depicts her naked torso, seen from below, with her arms only partially visible and without showing her head. The Torso, with its uplifted arms and muscular thighs, has a sculptoric quality that seems influenced by Auguste Rodin, whose work Stieglitz knew well and had shown at the Photo-Secession. [2]

The Torso was in the Stieglitz exhibition at the Anderson Galleries in New York City, where he presented pictures of several parts of the body of O'Keeffe, and which had a particular impact. Herbert Seligmann wrote that "Hands, feet, hands and breasts, torsos, all parts and attitudes of the human body seen with a passion of revelation, produced an astonishing effect on the multitudes who wandered in and out of the rooms". [3]

Art market

A print of this picture sold for $1,360,000 at Sotheby's New York, on 14 February 2006, making it the second most expensive price reached by a Stieglitz photograph. [4]

Public collections

There are prints of Torso at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., The Art Institute of Chicago, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and the Museé d’Orsay, in Paris. [5] [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierre-Auguste Renoir</span> French painter and sculptor (1841–1919)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georgia O'Keeffe</span> American modernist artist (1887–1986)

Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American modernist painter and draftswoman whose career spanned seven decades and whose work remained largely independent of major art movements. Called the "Mother of American modernism", O'Keeffe gained international recognition for her meticulous paintings of natural forms, particularly flowers and desert-inspired landscapes, which were often drawn from and related to places and environments in which she lived.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred Stieglitz</span> American photographer (1864–1946)

Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was known for the New York art galleries that he ran in the early part of the 20th century, where he introduced many avant-garde European artists to the U.S. He was married to painter Georgia O'Keeffe.

<i>Camera Work</i> Quarterly photographic journal (1903–1917)

Camera Work was a quarterly photographic journal published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917. It presented high-quality photogravures by some of the most important photographers in the world, with the goal to establish photography as a fine art. It has been called "consummately intellectual", "by far the most beautiful of all photographic magazines", and "a portrait of an age [in which] the artistic sensibility of the nineteenth century was transformed into the artistic awareness of the present day."

<i>Equivalents</i> Photography series by Alfred Stieglitz

Equivalents is a series of photographs of clouds taken by Alfred Stieglitz from 1925 to 1934. They are generally recognized as the first photographs intended to free the subject matter from literal interpretation, and, as such, are some of the first completely abstract photographic works of art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katharine Rhoades</span> American painter

Katharine Nash Rhoades was an American painter, poet and illustrator born in New York City. She was also a feminist.

Fine art nude photography is a genre of fine-art photography which depicts the nude human body with an emphasis on form, composition, emotional content, and other aesthetic qualities. The nude has been a prominent subject of photography since its invention, and played an important role in establishing photography as a fine art medium. The distinction between fine art photography and other subgenres is not absolute, but there are certain defining characteristics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katherine Stieglitz</span> Daughter of Alfred Stieglitz

Katherine Stieglitz, or Katherine Stieglitz Stearns, was the daughter of Emmeline, or Emmy, and Alfred Stieglitz, an American photographer and modern art promoter. She was the subject of many of her father's photographs, particularly in her early years. They were exhibited and received praise for their wholesome sentiment. She graduated from Smith College before marrying Milton Sprague Stearns. After the birth of her son in 1923, she was institutionalized for depression and hallucinations and remained there until her death in 1971.

<i>Red Canna</i> (paintings) Georgia OKeefe series (1915-1927)

Georgia O'Keeffe made a number of Red Canna paintings of the canna lily plant, first in watercolor, such as a red canna flower bouquet painted in 1915, but primarily abstract paintings of close-up images in oil. O'Keeffe said that she made the paintings to reflect the way she herself saw flowers, although others have called her depictions erotic, and compared them to female genitalia. O'Keeffe said they had misconstrued her intentions for doing her flower paintings: "Well – I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower – and I don't."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charcoal drawings by Georgia O'Keeffe from 1915</span>

Charcoal drawings by Georgia O'Keeffe from 1915 represents Georgia O'Keeffe's first major exploration of abstract art and attainment of a freedom to explore her artistic talents based upon what she felt and envisioned. O'Keeffe developed radical charcoal drawings, with just a few lines, that led to greater development of total abstraction. This series of works was completed following three summers of instruction at the University of Virginia on Arthur Wesley Dow's design philosophies, which were highly influential in her development as an abstract artist. Early the following year, photographer and art dealer, Alfred Stieglitz exhibited some of the drawings at his 291 art gallery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flower paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe</span> Paintings made between 1920s and 1950s

The American artist Georgia O'Keeffe is best known for her close-up, or large-scale flower paintings, which she painted from the mid-1920s through the 1950s. She made about 200 paintings of flowers of the more than 2,000 paintings that she made over her career. One of her paintings, Jimson Weed, sold for $44.4 million, making it the most expensive painting sold of a female artist's work as of 2014.

<i>Nude, 1925</i> Photograph by Edward Weston

Nude, 1925 is a black and white photograph taken by Edward Weston in 1925. It holds the record for Weston's most expensive photograph after being sold for $1,609,000 at the Sotheby's New York on 8 April 2008, to Peter MacGill of the Pace-MacGill Gallery. The photograph was part of the Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs, which was then auctioned.

Herbert Jacob Seligmann was an American author and journalist known for his writings on civil rights issues, African Americans, bigotry, the U.S. occupation of Haiti, and the rise of Nazism in Europe. He also wrote about well known artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe and John Marin, and about writers like D. H. Lawrence, Albert R. Brand, and J. Hendrix McLane. His review of Lady Chatterley's Lover appeared in The New York Sun but was removed from later editions because of the obscenity ban. His book on Lawrence was the first by an American. Seligmann was the first publicity director for the NAACP between 1919 and 1932, and was interviewed about the group's history on WNYC's radio program for African American subject matter. He also worked for the Jewish Telegraph Agency.

<i>The Terminal</i> (photograph) Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz

The Terminal is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1893. The photograph was taken in New York using the small 4 x 5 camera, which was a more practical instrument to document the city life than the 8 x 10 view camera, who could only work with a tripod.

<i>Winter, Fifth Avenue</i> Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz

Winter, Fifth Avenue is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1893. The photograph was made at the corner of the Fifth Avenue and the 35th Street in New York. It was one of the first pictures that Stieglitz took using a more practical hand camera after his return from Europe.

<i>Spring Showers, the Coach</i> Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz

Spring Showers, the Coach is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1899–1900. The picture was published in the Camera Notes journal in January 1902. Sometimes it is incorrectly presented as being taken in 1902.

<i>Georgia OKeeffe - Hands</i> Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz

Georgia O'Keeffe - Hands, also known as Georgia O'Keeffe (Hands), is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1919. It is part of a large group of more than 300 photographs that he took of the painter Georgia O'Keeffe, from 1917 prior to their 1924 marriage, through 1937.

<i>Balzac, the Open Sky</i> Photograph by Edward Steichen

Balzac, the Open Sky is a black and white photograph taken by American photographer Edward Steichen in 1908. The photograph is part of a series created by Steichen that depict the statue of Honoré de Balzac by Auguste Rodin, executed in plaster, in 1898. The statue would eventually be cast in bronze and inaugurated in Paris, in 1939.

<i>In Memoriam</i> (photograph) Photograph by Edward Steichen

In Memoriam is a black-and-white photograph by American photographer Edward Steichen, from 1904. It is one of his best-known pictorialist works and is a nude portrayal of a deceased female model, hence its title.

<i>Summer Days</i> (Georgia OKeeffe) Painting by Georgia OKeeffe from 1936

Summer Days is a 1936 oil painting by the American 20th-century artist Georgia O'Keeffe. It depicts a buck deer skull with large antlers juxtaposed with a vibrant assortment of wildflowers hovering below. The skull and flowers are suspended over a mountainous desert landscape occupying the lower part of the composition. Summer Days is among several landscape paintings featuring animal skulls and inspired by New Mexico desert O'Keeffe completed between 1934 and 1936.

References