Georgia O'Keeffe: My New Yorks

An insightful examination of Georgia O’Keeffe’s New York artworks from the late 1920s, highlighting their profound impact on the trajectory of her artistic evolution.
 
In 1924, Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) relocated to the Shelton Hotel in New York with her husband, photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz. The Shelton, Manhattan’s first residential skyscraper, inspired O’Keeffe to produce a striking series of about twenty-five paintings and numerous drawings over five years. Termed “my New Yorks,” these works primarily feature two compositional themes: expansive views looking down on the city and imposing perspectives looking up at the towering urban structures. Diverging from contemporaries like Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, who celebrated New York as a sleek, impersonal grid of geometric forms, O’Keeffe depicted the city as a fusion of organic and constructed elements, capturing New York “as it is felt.”
 
This publication offers a new perspective on a crucial yet often overlooked phase in O’Keeffe’s renowned career, placing the New York paintings within the broader context of her body of work and analyzing how these pieces engage with themes of constructed environments, racialized spaces, and the politics of location.