Georgia O'Keeffe created a series of paintings of skyscrapers in New York City between 1925 and 1929. They were made after O'Keeffe moved with her new husband into an apartment on the 30th floor of the Shelton Hotel, which gave her expansive views of all but the west side of the city. She expressed her appreciation of the city's early skyscrapers that were built by the end of the 1920s. One of her most notable works, which demonstrates her skill at depicting the buildings in the Precisionist style, is the Radiator Building—Night, New York, of the American Radiator Building.
In November 1925, O'Keeffe moved into one of New York City's tallest skyscrapers, the Shelton Hotel, with her husband of one year, Alfred Stieglitz. [1] [2] They lived on the 30th floor with clear, unobstructed northern, eastern, and southern views of the city. The building was located between 48th and 49th Streets on Lexington Avenue. O'Keeffe said of her interest in painting cityscapes, "I know it's unusual for an artist to want to work way up near the roof of a big hotel, in the heart of a roaring city, but I think that's just what the artist of today needs for stimulus. ... Today the city is something bigger, grander, more complex than ever before in history." [1]
Like photographer Charles Sheeler, watercolorist Charles Demuth, and other artists, she was interested in capturing "the mystique of the skyscrapers" that were a symbol of the modern world, and, at that time, a largely American phenomenon. Claude Fayette Bragdon, an American architect, said, "Not only is the skyscraper a symbol of the American Spirit—restless, centrifugal, seriously poised—but it is the only original development in the field of architecture to which we can lay unchallenged claim." [3]
O'Keeffe made about 25 drawings and paintings of New York City skyscrapers and cityscapes between 1925 and 1929. Her works are evocative of her own style.
In 1925, she created New York Street with Moon, which reflects her opinion that "one can't paint New York as it is, but rather as it is felt." Between the city skyscrapers is a sunset with a moon and fluffy clouds. The tall buildings, in an angled composition, are in the shadows and a streetlight casts a bright halo. [4]
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New York Street with Moon, 1925 | |
The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y., 1926 | |
City Night, 1926 | |
New York Night, 1928 / 1929 |
She made The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y. in 1926 that depicts an optical illusion that O'Keeffe saw of the Shelton Hotel one morning where there appeared to be "a bite out of one side of the tower made by the sun, with sunspots against the building and against the sky". An abstract painting made of rectangles and circles, it unifies the man-made skyscraper and the natural effect of glaring sunlight and sunspots against the building. The composition, taken from the street level, reflects the sense of awe that O'Keeffe felt about skyscrapers. [2] City Night, made the same year, depicts another form of illusion. The skyscrapers in the painting converge vertically, creating a cavernous image [5] with simple geometric shapes. The buildings tower above the city streets and the bright moon. [6] "With the eyes of a modernist, she has simplified the internal articulation of these behemoths, thus emphasizing their dark, vertical silhouettes against the deep blue sky," states art historian Eleanor Tufts. [7]
O'Keeffe used light in New York Night (1928/1929) to indicate "warmth and life in the city", though lighted streets and illuminated windows of dark buildings. [5]
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art describes Radiator Building—Night, New York as O'Keeffe's "grandest statement on New York City". [8] While made with a simplified style of Precisionism, it is also a realistic and skillful depiction of an architectural building. [5] O'Keeffe portrays the architectural elements of the Radiator Building, and what it looks like illuminated against the night sky. The upper floors of the building look like steps, which are illuminated at night with bright lights. Electric companies encouraged architects to include lighting in their designs, which made the buildings look more impressive. [9] A diagonal beam evokes movement. [5] [8] The ethereal smoke, which lines look like flowers, is contrasted against the straight lines of the skyscraper. [5] Stieglitz's name is set in red lights by the Scientific American Building and the composition may be seen as a double portrait, with O'Keeffe represented by the Radiator Building. [5]
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East River from the Thirtieth Story of the Shelton Hotel, 1928 |
O'Keeffe depicted a realistic view of Manhattan rooftops, the East River, and Long Island City of Queens in East River from the Thirtieth Story of the Shelton Hotel in 1928. Beyond the Manhattan skyline and the East River, factories in Queens emit smoke, creating a smoggy atmosphere and a dismal image. [1]
O'Keeffe stopped depicting New York's skyscrapers and its cityscape in 1929, when she went to Mabel Dodge Luhan's ranch in Taos, New Mexico and developed an interest in making paintings of the Southwest. At the time, she was unhappy in her marriage and with city life. Additionally, skyscrapers, which had been a symbol of America's success, became a symbol of its failure with the Wall Street Crash of 1929. [5]
Raymond Mathewson Hood was an American architect who worked in the Neo-Gothic and Art Deco styles. He is best known for his designs of the Tribune Tower, American Radiator Building, and Rockefeller Center. Through a short yet highly successful career, Hood exerted an outsized influence on twentieth century architecture.
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.
Precisionism was a modernist art movement that emerged in the United States after World War I. Influenced by Cubism, Purism, and Futurism, Precisionist artists reduced subjects to their essential geometric shapes, eliminated detail, and often used planes of light to create a sense of crisp focus and suggest the sleekness and sheen of machine forms. At the height of its popularity during the 1920s and early 1930s, Precisionism celebrated the new American landscape of skyscrapers, bridges, and factories in a form that has also been called "Cubist-Realism." The term "Precisionism" was first coined in the mid-1920s, possibly by Museum of Modern Art director Alfred H. Barr although according to Amy Dempsey the term "Precisionism" was coined by Charles Sheeler. Painters working in this style were also known as the "Immaculates", which was the more commonly used term at the time. The stiffness of both art-historical labels suggests the difficulties contemporary critics had in attempting to characterize these artists.
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The American Radiator Building is an early skyscraper at 40 West 40th Street, just south of Bryant Park, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It was designed by Raymond Hood and André Fouilhoux in the Gothic and Art Deco styles for the American Radiator Company. The original section of the American Radiator Building, a 338 ft-tall (103 m), 23-story tower, was completed in 1924. A five-story annex, to the west of the original tower, was built from 1936 to 1937.
The Beekman Tower, also known as the Panhellenic Tower, is a 26-story Art Deco skyscraper situated at the corner of First Avenue and East 49th Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building was constructed between 1927 and 1928 and was designed by John Mead Howells.
Arnold Rönnebeck was a German-born American modernist artist and museum administrator. He was a vital member of both the European and American avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century before settling in Denver, Colorado. Rönnebeck was a sculptor and painter, but is best known for his lithographs that featured a range of subjects including New York cityscapes, New Mexico and Colorado landscapes and Native American dances.
The Master Apartments, officially known as the Master Building, is a 27-story Art Deco skyscraper at 310 Riverside Drive, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City. It sits on the northeast corner of Riverside Drive and West 103rd Street. Designed by Harvey Wiley Corbett of the firm Helmle, Corbett & Harrison, in conjunction with Sugarman & Berger, the Master Apartments was completed in 1929 as the tallest building on Riverside Drive. It was the first skyscraper in New York City to feature corner windows and the first to employ brick in varying colors for its entire exterior.
Todd Webb was an American photographer notable for documenting everyday life and architecture in cities such as New York City, Paris as well as from the American west. He traveled extensively during his long life and had important friendships with artists such as Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and Harry Callahan.
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Jimson Weed is an oil on linen painting by American artist Georgia O'Keeffe from 1936, located in the Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana. It depicts four large blossoms of jimson weed.
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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."
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Black Iris, formerly called Black Iris III, is a 1926 oil painting by Georgia O'Keeffe. Art historian Linda Nochlin interpreted Black Iris as a morphological metaphor for female genitalia. O'Keeffe rejected such interpretations in a 1939 text accompanying an exhibition of her work, in which she wrote: "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." She attempted to do away with sexualized readings of her work by adding a lot of detail.
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.
The Lawrence Tree is a painting by Georgia O'Keeffe in 1929 of a large ponderosa pine tree on the D. H. Lawrence Ranch in Taos County, New Mexico. The tree still survives and may be visited at the Lawrence Ranch.
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Pearl C. Hsiung is a Taiwan-born American multi-media artist based in Los Angeles.