Women’s rights are facing increased legislation in the United States. This is 1 of 8 pivotal artworks about women’s autonomy and sexuality.

Cover photo: Grey Lines with Black, Blue and Yellow, oil on canvas, by Georgia O’Keeffe (1923). Photo by Cliff and courtesy of Flickr.

Even in this #MeToo era, women’s rights are still under attack. Activists are fighting all over the world, for the LGBT community, Black lives, and women’s control over their own bodies and sexuality. Just recently, 8 states have passed new anti-abortion bills. Here are 8 pivotal artworks about women’s autonomy and sexuality. This is one work of an eight-part series.

WARNING: The following article discusses topics of sex, sexuality, nudity, and eroticism.

Grey Lines with Black, Blue and Yellow — Georgia O’Keeffe (1923)

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) is a Modern American artist best known for her paintings of flowers, skulls, and desert landscapes. O’Keeffe was a member of the National Woman’s Party, a political party that advocated for women’s suffrage. In 1946, she became the first woman to earn a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. O’Keeffe redefined American art and is considered the mother of the American Modernist movement.

O’Keeffe’s drawings first caught the attention of photographer and New York gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz was an influential member of the art community — the only man among his peers who believed women could create art equal to that of men — and he became O’Keeffe’s chief promoter, she became his mistress, and the two later married in 1924.

Stieglitz is inextricably tied to O’Keeffe’s legacy. His views of art were heavily influenced by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and thus Stieglitz equated creativity with sexual energy. Despite O’Keeffe’s protestations, Stieglitz framed O’Keeffe’s works in terms of sexual liberation. He often exhibited O’Keeffe’s art alongside the nude photographs he took of her. “When people read erotic symbols into my paintings, they’re really talking about their own affairs,” O’Keeffe argued.

Grey Lines with Black, Blue and Yellow is perhaps O’Keeffe’s most sexually provocative painting. The ambiguous cropping of the abstracted organic shapes certainly adds to the misconception. The sexually charged readings of O’Keeffe’s work often caused viewers — and even art critics — to overlook her technical mastery. Critic Paul Ronsenfeld wrote, “Shapes as tender and sensitive as trembling lips, seem slowly, ecstatically to unfold before the eye. It is as though one had been given to see the mysterious parting movement of petals under the rays of sudden fierce heat”.

O’Keeffe had trained with artist and educator Arthur Wesley Dow, a forebearer of the Arts and Crafts Movement who was inspired by Japanese art. Dow focused on three principles of composition: line, color, and notan, a Japanese word meaning dark-light. He advocated learning from nature and “filling space in a beautiful way.” O’Keeffe’s oeuvre perfectly encapsulates these concepts.

O’Keeffe explained, “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.” She also once joked, “I hate flowers — I paint them because they’re cheaper than models and they don’t move.”

O’Keeffe created fewer abstract works following 1923, hoping the sexual readings would subside. Despite her love for Stieglitz, O’Keeffe left New York for New Mexico in 1929, in a rejection of the art capital where sexuality had been imposed upon her. O’Keeffe fought her femininity altogether. “I am not a woman painter!” she once exclaimed, hoping to be recognized as simply an artist in her own right. She proceeded to dress in androgynous outfits.

O’Keeffe’s story is that of a woman whose identity has been distorted and reclaimed by others. First Stieglitz’s Freudian obsession, critical reception, and then third-wave feminists embraced O’Keeffe as a woman who fearlessly owned her sexuality.

While viewer interpretation is of course allowed, misconception surrounding O’Keeffe survives. She was a widely talented and successful artist but O’Keeffe did not intend to titillate with her paintings. Today, O’Keeffe holds the record for the world’s most expensive female artist ever. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, in Santa Fe, is the first art museum in the United States dedicated to a female artist. Certainly, O’Keeffe’s paintings continue to inspire.