Artistic Vagina

Less Word Wednesday #8 - Human Perspective

1926 - Yellow Calla

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. - O'Keeffe

This post may not suitable to be viewed during office hour and as it may deemed as offensive by some. Please continue at your own risk. You have been strongly warned...

Any thought? (Please ignore the full picture below!)

Well, as your peripheral vision may already looks for the larger version of the picture below, this is actually a flower in a close up shot. And thanks for my alteration of the picture’s hue and saturation, some MAY think this is a female sexual production organ; vagina. Do you?

The innocent flower

Representational painting, such as landscapes, people and furniture, is normally viewed at face value. A flower is just a flower; a chair is just a chair. But the manner in which an artist uses shapes can convey more than the literal content of the painting.

Once you grasp how an artist plays with shapes to convey another layer of meaning, it can open up a universe of deeper insight and, sometimes, powerfully erotic subtexts. You may never see art again in the same way.

Does name Georgia Totto O'Keeffe sound familiar to you? She was born a century before me, so I don’t know anything about her. I stumbled with her name last week after I-am-bored-and-don’t-what-else-to-do random searched in Google. I read her biography at Wikipedia and I think she was a great artist. Just see one of her many wonderful works below:

1923 - Grey Line with Black,Blue and Yellow

At first glance you see a flower and, on reflection, you might grasp features of female anatomical details such as the clitoral hood, the clitoris, the labia majora, and the labia minora. O'Keeffe is making an interesting statement in associating the vagina with a flower. The vagina is to humanity what a flower is to nature: it is life-giving, beautiful, and fragile, yet resilient.

1924 - Light Iris

Continuing with another O'Keeffe painting, notice that there are no sharp vertical lines here. Rather, there are organic, fluid shapes and outlines. These shapes are easy metaphors for the soft lips of the labia and the yellow bud serves for the small erectile body of the clitoris. There is a strong sense that we are entering into the flower, but we also get a sense that inside is a whole new universe open to us.

So I said to myself-I'll paint what I see-what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it-I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers... - O'Keeffe

O'Keeffe marched to the tune of her own drummer, which is hard enough to do today, and even harder to do a century ago when women were intended for marriage and procreation alone. She seems an interesting woman after my own heart - a loner and a lover of nature who was happiest at her remote Ghost Ranch.

Okay, I am sure not everyone is interested with arts, but I do. If you don’t like art, do read this paragraph (in case you just skipping through the post). Art exhibitions and museums are not as boring as many think they are. Art is very subjective. Some may treat blood and death body as art, some treat human parts and body as a source of arts. Other prefers classical and abstract art. For example, O’Keeffe used flowers, buildings and bones as her source of inspiration. One may view this is common things in our daily life, but she made her painting by using it. So, if you are not such a fan of art, the next time you go to an art exhibition, try to wear a difference set of eyes.

Some may deem nudity as offensive while others may not. I might look at a bowl and thinking of hot mushroom soup in this damp weather, but for some, the idea of human breast may pops in their mind. Who knows right? Human perspective is widely discussed subject, and it is a part of how human complex mind is functioning; God’s creation wonder. That being said please do not start walking naked outside your house, or even outside your room. Just to be clear, I am not promoting any public nudity. So, where do you stand? Are arts such as this will offend you? Or is it just another form of inspiration? Oh, and do not restricted your mind thinking arts only in form of painting. Song is one of its kinds too!

About Georgia Totto O'Keeffe:

I hate flowers. I only paint them because they're cheaper than models and they don't move. - O'Keeffe

O'Keeffe has been a major figure in American art since the 1920s. She is chiefly known for paintings in which she synthesized abstraction and representation in paintings of flowers, rocks, shells, animal bones and landscapes. Her paintings present crisply contoured forms that are replete with subtle tonal transitions of varying colors. She often transformed her subject matter into powerful abstract images.

One of the most respected and widely regarded American artists of the of last century, O'keefe was a modernist painter who cannot be tied down to that period - her work seems as timeless, vibrant and inspiring as it was fifty years ago.

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Bluecrystaldude

Links: Georgia O'Keeffe - Wikipedia | O'Keeffe Gallery | Painting Analysis - Newberry Workshop |

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