An American in Paris: O’Keeffe at Pompidou

O’Keeffe, in my eyes, remains a distinctly American painter. She didn’t spend time in Europe like her husband Alfred Stiegletz and contemporary Marsden Hartley or jet off to Mexico for years like photographer Edward Weston. While she traveled, it was mostly throughout the United States, and there is no evidence that she ever visited France.

At last, this has changed.

The retrospective at the Pompidou Center in Paris is a thorough survey of O’Keeffe’s like and work, and her distinctly American iconography has a particular force on the walls of a French institution. She painted New York City skyscrapers and New Mexico landscapes, native plants like the Jimson Weed and the steeples of country churches.

Georgia O’Keeffe, “Ram’s Head, White Hollyhock-Hills (Ram’s Head and White Hollyhock, New Mexico)“, 1935. Oil on canvas, 76,2 × 91,4 cm. Brooklyn Museum. Bequest of Edith and Milton Lowenthal © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum / Adagp, Paris 2021

Skulls, cacti, sparse landscapes and towering city skylines are recurring motifs of her oeuvre, imagery that is decidedly un-French. Still, like any unexpected or never-before-seen presentation, the exhibition presents an opportunity to explore O’Keeffe in a new light, to see the French interpretation of her body of work.

“Black Door with Red” (1954). Photo © Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Adagp, Paris, 2021

Pompidou showcases the artist’s versatility, underscoring that her range was so much more than the flower paintings she is overly associated with today. By bringing together such a breadth and depth of O’Keefe’s work, her mastery of color and abstraction can be appreciated to its fullest extent.

The exhibition also delves into her personal life and her formative relationship with Alfred Stieglitz, but this is mostly background, not something to be lingered on. Instead, the exhibition lets O’Keeffe’s work do the talking, and luckily for us, it has plenty to say.