Tanya Barson: 'O'Keeffe' Tate, 2016
Tate Modern ‘Georgia O’Keeffe’ (July 6th – Oct 30th 2016)
(more than 100 works on display, the exhibition highlights ‘under-appreciated’ aspect of the US painter’s career)
O’Keeffe’s floral works prove their relevance to contemporary ecofeminist theory as proven by the recent installation of the 2016 Tate Exhibition, curated by Tanya Barson (EllisPetersen,2016,p1). Featuring over 100 of O’Keeffe’s works, the exhibition reflected on the widely accepted assumptions that her flower paintings depict vulvar anatomy. Emphasising how much O’Keeffe resisted this Freudian theory of sexualising her works, as highlighted through her assertiveness to be seen ‘as an important artist not just an important female artist’; Barson hoped the Tate retrospective would illustrate how ‘this clichéd interpretation written almost a century ago by Stieglitz’, and perpetuated by male art critics at the time, was gendered an outdated (Ellis-Petersen,2016,p1).
Regardless of the intent behind O’Keeffe’s botanical works, her 1920 floral paintings were revived by feminists in the 1970’s, who took her work as a statement of female empowerment. Barson’s comment reflecting on the influence of the conservative male over nature depicted in art, only further accentuates an entrenched, misogynistic perspective on the relationship between flora and female; a concept ecofeminist art sets out to define. However, being able to exhibit a show addressing this ‘backward, old-fashioned outlook’ (Ellis-Petesen,2016,p1) demonstrates that although still poignant, such concerns have lessened in imperativeness due to the more liberated, equalised Eurocentric environment we live in today. This exhibition has allowed one to see how far ecofeminists have come as Barson boldly dispels the clichés of her work focused on female sexuality. This is contextually relevant to my practice as it exposes how ecological feminism has developed over the century as Barson’s exhibition liberates and rejoices in O’Keeffe as ‘an artist in her own right’, no longer so restrictively associated to and acknowledged as Stieglitz 1920’s wife; a woman transfixed and ‘at one with nature’.