Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction January 1, 2008

Georgia O'Keeffe has consistently incorporated circular forms into her compositions. Her use of this motif stands in contrast to strategies of abstraction adopted by many of her peers, which tended to be Cubist-based, using straight lines and angles rather than curves and circles. Using the circle and its kin-- the ellipse, the oval, and the arcing line--O'Keeffe explored the shifting terrain between abstraction and representation, sometimes calling upon such forms to represent a mood, a reaction to a sensation, or the spiritual essence of a subject, while at other times using them to encourage her viewers to see new relationships between familiar objects.