Georgia O’Keeffe’s Oriental Poppies, painted in 1927, is considered a groundbreaking masterpiece that highlights her interest in the abstract elements of color, shape, and texture. The painting features a close-up view of the poppies’ velvety dark interior with vivid colors that contrast sharply against each other. This iconic work is one of her seven paintings of poppies and is less menacing than her other large poppy paintings.
Oriental Poppies presents the flowers as pure abstracts by avoiding context entirely. It captures an essence of the flower through its shape and coloring rather than depicting it realistically. O’Keeffe’s successful abstraction renders this beautiful flower magnificent in object form. As an artist based on instinct, not analysis; she dismissed labeling herself accordingly: “I am not a ‘woman painter’, I am an artist.”
Known for magnified floral representations such as Oriental Poppies and animal skulls found throughout her work – this representation made her immortalize pure natural beauty while offering a reflection through which others could see more clearly views obscured by familiarity or conventionality.By exaggerating proportions or stripping away contextual details,O’Keeffe’s approach reveals macroscopic dimensions to everyday objects- thereby guiding art enthusiasts on what to appreciate about nature’s bounty around us beyond what we could often notice ourselves.
