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O’Keeffe’s Self-fashioning

From Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction

Sept 17, 2009

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O’Keeffe’s Self-fashioning

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Narrator: In this case, you’ll see four magazines featuring O’Keeffe. They range from 1960 to 1968. As portraits of an artist, the photographs here are extremely different from the ones we saw earlier.

Barbara Haskell: Beginning in 1929, as O’Keeffe began to essentially reassert her own independence. She realized that the perception of herself through Stieglitz 's photographs as a sexual being was detrimental to the critical reading of her work, and she began to reframe her public persona.

Narrator: By the 1960s, that transformation was complete. She had carefully crafted her image as a solitary, independent artist, identified with the landscape of the American west. These magazine spreads bear witness to her transformation into an American icon. She had achieved a level of fame and celebrity achieved by few artists.