Dressing for the Photographer: Georgia O’Keeffe and Her Clothes

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Jessica Fijalkovich, Communications and External Relations
February 15, 2019
Person at a podium with the Georgia O'Keeffe LIFE Magazine cover on the screen behind them.

Image courtesy Brandon Baker for the Cleveland Museum of Art.

During a recent lecture, “Dressing for the Photographer: Georgia O’Keeffe and Her Clothes,” at the Cleveland Museum of Art, art historian Wanda M. Corn asked, “How do we know this is Georgia O’Keeffe?” as the audience examined a projected image of the iconic artist gracing a 1968 Life magazine cover. The photograph, shot by John Loengard during a visit to the artist’s Ghost Ranch home in 1967, depicts a solitary woman wrapped in black, her gray hair in a bun, her bowed head profiled against an adobe chimney on a New Mexico rooftop in the desert.

March 1, 1968 cover of LIFE magazine. John Loengard — LIFE Magazine

This image embodies the thread found running throughout the exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern. Professor Corn believes this photograph solidified O’Keeffe’s late-life identity as a “pioneer painter” — an identity that O’Keeffe, and the photographers she modeled for, had been crafting for more than twenty years. To answer her own question, Corn pointed at O’Keeffe’s persona in the image and stated, “We as twenty-first-century viewers recognize the visual vocabulary: the baroque body, the averted eyes, the inward gaze, the adobe setting, and the open skies.”

Throughout O’Keeffe’s life, photographs depicting her continually assert her agency in crafting a public persona — from her clothing to the way she posed for the camera. According to Mark Cole, curator of American painting and sculpture at the Cleveland Museum of Art, it was Corn’s discovery of O’Keeffe’s closets and what was in them that stimulated the exhibition’s fresh perspective on the artist’s identity: the aesthetic unity of her art and her sartorial style. The show also demonstrated how carefully she fashioned herself when she modeled for photographers.

Much like the organization of Living Modern, Corn’s lecture detailed this persona building through the role photography played in it: from O’Keeffe’s early years when she crafted a signature style of dress that asserted a less-is-more aesthetic; to her years in New York, from the 1920s through the 1930s, when “she dressed as if she were an unbroken black-and-white abstract form moving through space”; and to her later years in New Mexico, where she made subtle changes to her art and wardrobe that mirrored the colors of the desert landscape.

Profile of Georgia O’Keeffe, Mortar Board high school yearbook, 1905. Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern Installation Image courtesy Cleveland Museum of Art.

Beginnings

Born into a late-Victorian household, O’Keeffe never conformed to her mother’s conventions of dress. As Corn put it, “she was a rebel dresser before she was a radical painter.” As indicated by photographs from her childhood on, she always opted for plainness over ornamentation, having a predominantly black-and-white wardrobe of unbroken silhouettes. “She also insisted that her less-is-more garments be comfortable and functional.” Corn noted that from a young age, O’Keeffe “gravitated toward robes, capes, and wraps that were easy for her to slip into without any assistance. She liked pockets to carry her hankies and was drawn to elemental shapes — round mother-of-pearl buttons, V necklines, and Mandarin collars.”

By her late twenties, O’Keeffe was head of the art department at a teacher’s college in Canyon, Texas. She was primarily making her own clothing out of cotton, silk, and wool, all in black with touches of white trim — a style she would continue her entire life. Her simplified dress garnered criticism from the locals, as it was associated with being a “New Woman” or suffragette.

Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern Installation Image courtesy Cleveland Museum of Art.

New York

In 1917 O’Keeffe met photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz. Shortly thereafter, in 1918, she left teaching in Texas to become a professional artist in Manhattan. They lived together for six years before marrying in 1924.

Throughout the course of their relationship, Stieglitz made nearly 330 portraits of O’Keeffe. Corn noted that “her black-and-white wardrobe played well to his black-and-white film.” Stieglitz referred to these photos as a continuous portrait of O’Keeffe, as he created face and body recognition. He came up with a typology of poses for O’Keeffe that aimed to feminize her, which Corn broke down into four categories: woman artist, nature artist, modern woman, and zen mystic.

Woman Artist

“He engaged a different body vocabulary for a female artist than he used for the male artists in his circle,” said Corn. “This conformed to his deeply held beliefs that men and women had very different ways of being in the world, different physiques and different ways of making art.” Stieglitz directed his poses of O’Keeffe when photographing her. Corn pointed out that “what’s unusual is the way he inserts her head into the work of art.” There is a performative element to his photographs of her. When he photographed O’Keeffe, he had her body interact with her artwork behind her, unlike portraits he made of male artists.

Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern Installation Image courtesy Cleveland Museum of Art.

Nature Artist

“There are many photos where Stieglitz closely aligns O’Keeffe to nature,” Corn asserted. “This was another way of gendering women at the time — rounded, organic, all flesh-like flowers and fruits.” In these photos, O’Keeffe is often posed caressing trees or holding fruits, emphasizing serpentine and flowing lines over straight lines.

Georgia O’Keeffe at Yosemite, 1938. Ansel Adams (American, 1902–1984). Gelatin silver print; 5 3/4 x 3 3/8 in. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, NM, Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 2006.06.0856. © 2016 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

Modern Woman

Stieglitz’s highly gendered gaze presented O’Keeffe not just as a modern artist but as a modern woman. “When she self-consciously dressed mannishly, and acted out her commitment to New Womanhood and radical sexual politics, he dramatized her dedication to nonconforming dress,” said Corn. Progressive New Women dressed androgynously, borrowing from male attire. “Stieglitz perfected shooting her from below when she dressed this way, forming O’Keeffe into an abstract shape against the sky.”

Georgia O’Keeffe, c. 1920–22. Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864–1946). Gelatin silver print; 11.4 x 9 cm (4 1/2 x 3 9/16 in.). Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, NM, Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 2003.01.006

Zen Mystic

Featuring the artist’s head covered with a shawl or hood as she looks away from the camera lost in thought and rumination, these photographs began the iconography of O’Keeffe’s spiritual persona, exemplified by the 1968 Life magazine cover story. “Stieglitz’s photographs promoted O’Keeffe’s dramatic profile, her inexplicable gestures, and her black-and-white wardrobe,” said Corn.

Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern Installation Image courtesy Cleveland Museum of Art.

New Mexico

Although Stieglitz created some iconography through his posing of O’Keeffe, there was a placelessness to his photographs, especially when compared to the iconic 1968 Life magazine cover that solidified her American mass following. It would be the next generation of photographers who would associate O’Keeffe’s body with the American desert.

O’Keeffe began to travel to New Mexico in 1929, seeking the solitude and freedom she needed to pursue her work. Over time she bought two properties: Ghost Ranch and a house in Abiquiú. Stieglitz never ventured out West, thus ending his monopoly of nearly twenty years of photographing O’Keeffe. This allowed O’Keeffe, an experienced model by this point, to pose for other photographers.

Georgia O’Keeffe on Ghost Ranch Portal, New Mexico, c. 1960s. Todd Webb (American, 1905–2000). Gelatin silver print; 25.4 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.). Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, NM, Gift of the Georgia O’Keeffe Foundation, 2006.06.1046. © Estate of Todd Webb, Portland, ME

According to Corn, “She had sorted out what photographic poses of Stieglitz she liked best. She did not like the ones that overtly feminized her, but she did like those that made her appear like a serious, thoughtful, and expressive artist. She had a preference for poses of the mystic and spiritual type. She had also learned that photographs circulating through exhibitions and the media were powerful tools for projecting her artistic identity, for creating a persona.”

When posing for this new generation of photographers, O’Keeffe continued to dress in black and white but now accessorized with long white scarves and her signature wide-brimmed vaquero hat. Building on what Stieglitz had begun, she easily fell into unsmiling poses. However, instead of positioning her as an abstract mass against an open sky, photographer Philippe Halsman portrayed her seated in her adobe courtyard, placing her into the new context of the specific indigenous landscape and architecture.

Georgia O’Keeffe at Ghost Ranch with Skull, 1948 by Philippe Halsman. Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern Installation Image courtesy Cleveland Museum of Art.

After Halsman came other photographers who would reinvent O’Keeffe as a regionalized mystic of the Southwest. “George Daniell and Yousuf Karsh posed her as serious and sphinxlike, just as Stieglitz had, but geographically rooted her as he had never done,” said Corn. “They viewed her as a strange priestess or meditative nun, surrounded by the things that were commonly understood as signifiers of the American desert.” Donning a black hood or suit, O’Keeffe would pose herself against the Southwest landscape looking away from the camera, lost in thought. She was no longer the universal woman as Stieglitz had rendered her; she was now an artist of the American West. “What had started in Stieglitz’s photographs,” noted Corn, “and gone western with Halsman, Daniell, and Karsh became a standard grammar for those making formal portraits of the artist in her late years.”

Above: Image courtesy Brandon Baker for the Cleveland Museum of Art. Below: Georgia O’Keeffe, Seated, 1956 by Yousuf Karsh. Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern Installation mage courtesy Cleveland Museum of art.

When visiting O’Keeffe in 1960, photographer Tony Vaccaro drew a relationship between her art, the arid landscape, and her wrapped body in a rare composition in color. This wrap dress became her New Mexico uniform for the last twenty years of her life. She had more than twenty-six of these dresses, many of them in black but also in several colors and materials. She favored them because they were comfortable like a robe and had pockets. They had no buttons or zippers and were very plain. She often wore an Alexander Calder pin at the V of the neckline.

Georgia O’Keeffe with Painting in the Desert, N.M., 1960. Tony Vaccaro (American, b. 1922). Chromogenic print; 35.2 x 45.7 cm (13 7/8 x 18 in.). Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, 2007.3.2. Photo: Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

“O’Keeffe exerted agency in the making of her image bank and in the construction of her meditative persona, her zen self. When photographers came to call, she was as deliberate a modern composer of her body as she was a modern painter on canvas.” — Wanda M. Corn, Art Historian

At the close of the lecture, Corn urged the audience to remember a few key takeaways when visiting Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern: “O’Keeffe exerted agency in the making of her image bank and in the construction of her meditative persona, her zen self. When photographers came to call, she was as deliberate a modern composer of her body as she was a modern painter on canvas.”

Image courtesy Brandon Baker for the Cleveland Museum of Art.

To return to the Life magazine cover, when Corn asked John Loengard what it was like to work with O’Keeffe, he told her that she needed no coaching and posed instinctively as she took her canonical position against an adobe chimney and the open sky.