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Margaret O’Hara (July 20, 2023). "O'Keeffe's Wikipedia page receives a refresh". The Santa Fe New Mexican. Retrieved July 23, 2023. As a result, Moseley, who started editing Wikipedia pages with the start of her internship this summer, has become an active member of the Georgia O'Keeffe Wikipedia page's "Talk" section, recommending a new structure for the page and possible editswhile disclaiming her connection to O'Keeffe.
The following Wikipedia contributor has declared a personal or professional connection to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest, autobiography, and neutral point of view.
it seems odd that she is not mentioned on the Georgia O'Keefe page, as she was responsible the restoration of the house and garden at Abiquiu (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Chabot).As it stands the page seems to further the myth that O'Keefe herself did it. It would be worth including in the references the book Maria Chabot-- Georgia O'Keefe: Correspondence, 1941-49 [2003] by Ann Paden and Barbara Buhler Lynes, and perhaps the novel Someone Always Nearby [2023] by Susan Wittig Albert which is based on the correspondence. I'm in owe of all the fine consideration people in this Talk are giving improvements to the O'Keefe page. I have no experience making edits, and wouldn't want to mess up your fine work. I'm just suggesting an addition. Thanks BWG1 (talk) 18:11, 15 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
However, she did not paint the requested pineapple until the Hawaiian Pineapple Company sent a plant to her New York studio.
The story behind this is fascinating, and I realize that space is limited in terms of focus, but a touch more needs to be said on this point; she did not paint the pineapple in situ for various reasons, primarily because the company was racist and sexist, and refused to allow her, as a woman, to mingle with the workers, to paint the pineapple growing in the fields, or to reside and live among the workers as she originally requested. At the time, women, particularly white women were not allowed to even entertain the idea, and O'Keeffe unintentionally caused a minor scandal when she made this request. Due to the rejection of her wishes, and the failure of the company to provide an adequate plant or cutting, she delayed the commission and put it on the back-burner, and for good reason. For people who don't know the history, there's a lot behind this story, as the sugar companies were responsible for taking over the Hawaiian Kingdom, overthrowing the monarchy, and installing Sanford B. Dole as president, and later governor. It was his cousin, James Dole, who would later establish the Hawaiian Pineapple Company. Viriditas (talk) 08:20, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have created a new article on this subject in my draft space. I probably won't move it to mainspace for a few weeks because it needs work, but we will see how it goes. Viriditas (talk) 00:19, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This section is slightly problematic as it gives undue weight to interpretations O'Keeffe spent an entire lifetime debunking, beginning with her major statement on the issue in 1939. While there's no question that O'Keeffe was a lifetime feminist and took a stand on equality (there's even a funny anecdote where as a child she insisted the Christian god was a woman, not a man), she fundamentally opposed "gender-based" interpretations of her art. Looking at her work as a man, I sometimes wonder if I'm seeing things in the paintings or if this is just a function of my mammalian brain, some kind of gender-based pareidolia? Could the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s have fallen for this kind of psychological bias as well? I think there's some truth to this, but there's also the fact that O'Keeffe's subjects contain symbols and archetypes of femininity. The question is whether this is simply inherent in her subjects related to nature itself or if she was trying to express this ideas as the goddess movement claimed. Over many years, it's become clear that the former is likely the case. In other words, there is some kind of cognitive bias at work as well as some kind of feminine symbolism inherent in nature itself (which after all is personified as a "mother" for good reason), the combination of which has led to different interpretations of O'Keeffe's work. If true, one would expect to see this kind of thing arise in art from men as well, and I think one could safely argue that it does, but perhaps isn't as widely known or celebrated, so there's an additional bias of selection at work. Viriditas (talk) 01:21, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, "...the fact that O'Keeffe's subjects contain symbols and archetypes of femininity. The question is whether this is simply inherent in her subjects related to nature itself...". This question, considered as applying to all of humankind universally in the symbols they use in their arts, rather than just to O'Keeffe or women, was addressed at length by Carl Jung in his writings on archetypes and the oceanic "Collective Unconscious"; the sea was described by Matthew A. Fike as Jung's "key image for the deep unconscious". Marianna Torgovnick, in her book Primitive Passions: Men, Women, and the Quest for Ecstasy, writes about "broad divergences in male and female ways of of experiencing the primitive and the oceanic" with studies of Carl Jung, D.H. and Frieda Lawrence, and Georgie O'Keeffe, all of whom were visitors to the salon at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, where Jung once lectured on the outdoor patio. Carlstak (talk) 03:04, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see you are a master of the forces of synchronicity. The connection between Luhan and just about everyone else is almost inescapable. I first encountered the "force" when I was writing about Ella Young. I soon discovered that no matter what one writes about, the "cosmic forces of Taos" will eventually intrude in some way. I live on Maui, which in many respects is the unofficial sister city of Taos, although if you asked me to explain it to you it would be impossible. Personally, my time in Taos was short, and although I haven't been back in many years, both Taos and Maui have the same, identical je ne sais quoi that is beyond language itself. I can't explain it, of course, but the common denominator is nature herself. Viriditas (talk) 08:37, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Haha, somehow I can see that connection between Taos and Maui. I haven't been to Taos since I was a kid, but I remember certain scenes with crystal clarity, and even then, I was conscious of a spiritual (for lack of a better word) vibe in the air. I didn't think of it that way at the time but I did associate that feeling with the mountains. Carlstak (talk) 21:30, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PS: Regarding the "Art criticism and scholarship" section, I think the section should definitely be expanded (and what a rich topic it is). There's plenty to say about critical reception and scholarly discussions of her work that don't focus on sex. I certainly have my own thoughts about sexual imagery and symbolism, personal or universal, in her paintings, but I wouldn't feel comfortable trying to say what women feel or intend in their art on this talk page or anywhere—let them say it. So I would consult their scholarship in my inquiries. I'd love to read up and write something about it, but I'm writing business proposals (at least I'm supposed to be. WP is a drug.;-) Carlstak (talk) 22:03, 15 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking of drugs, while working on Sky Above Clouds, I was quite surprised to learn that Dennis Hopper and O'Keeffe were good friends, and I suspect that Mabel Dodge Luhan was the source of their friendship, although I don't really know. We do know that O'Keeffe had a fascination with hallucinogenic plants and painted and grew quite a few of them (she was quite a gardener), although there is no evidence that I know of that she ever ingested any. However, having hung around New Mexico a bit, it would be surprising to discover that she had never had the experience ("Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful"). As strange as it sounds to us today, her generation (the Lost Generation) experimented and grew up with incredible cultural changes known as the Progressive Era and the Roaring Twenties, and I think we forget how revolutionary that time really was. I only found out just yesterday that O'Keeffe was a nudist at that time, which is not written about in any of her major biographies that I know about (but much is made about her nude art photos, which is an entirely separate topic), although the idea that she was a nudist might be somewhat of an exaggeration, as I've come to understand that nudism is far more common in society that we might think, but is kept somewhat quiet in America; in Europe it may not be considered special or important given its greater acceptance. But I do suspect there's a lot we don't know about O'Keeffe that has still to come to light. Her platonic relationship with Jean Toomer isn't even discussed in this bio. Viriditas (talk) 08:52, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I would think that an artist might be interested in ingesting a plant that induces such intense visual stimulation as peyote. She must have heard about it in her circle of friends, some of whom were at Luhan's apartment in New York when Raymond Harrington brought some for everyone to try. I find that it has some of the most intense visuals of the psychedelics (large doses). Louis Wain got close to depicting the sort of visual patterns that I see in everything with some of his more abstract, paisley-like cat paintings.
Well, after reading that link to Mabel Dodge Luhan's peyote experience that you provided, I can safely say with some confidence that she did not turn O'Keeffe on (or anyone else again for that matter), not just because O'Keeffe was living in Texas at the time teaching art as a professor, but mostly because Luhan screwed the proverbial pooch when it came to psychedelics, per her own memoir. She did everything you are not supposed to do, and she deliberately ignored the advice, given repeatedly by the so-called acting shaman (Harrington) all because it was "her house" and she couldn't stand the ceremony as she refused to take the second button. What a clusterfuck all around, and her actions had real-world consequences for people in the ceremony she disrupted. Luhan does not sound like a good person, I'm sorry to say. No wonder Harrington and everyone else in the ceremony never had anything to do with her again. On the other hand, Luhan seems to have single-handedly invented the "bad trip" cliche, so there's that. What a shitty person. This is par for the course. I've been writing extensively about Renoir, Gauguin, and Lautrec, and they were all extremely shitty people, prisoners all of them, contained by huge egos. Never meet your heroes, kids. Viriditas (talk) 20:42, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, Luhan may have been the hostess of a scintillating salon, but she was deeply uncool in the worst way. I knew I had read about this somewhere, and I dug it up in my browser history. Apparently freaked out by the sacred plant's effects in the gathering at her Manhattan apartment, she went after the Native American Church and lobbied for a federal law prohibiting the use of peyote. Marcus Boon writes:
Luhan was apparently appalled by the effects of peyote. In the 1930s, by which time she was living in Taos, New Mexico, presiding over a salon that included figures like D. H. Lawrence and Georgia O'Keeffe, Luhan was a vocal campaigner against the use of peyote by the Native American Church and lobbied for a federal law preventing peyote use... But thanks to a coalition of anthropologists that included Harrington, Weston La Barre, and Franz Boas, and representatives of native tribes, attempts to introduce the bill in the Senate were defeated in 1937—the same year that the passing of the Marijuana Tax Act effectively made marijuana use illegal.
@Carlstak: Check out At the Rodeo (1929).[1] O'Keeffe painted this after drinking whiskey at a Pueblo ceremonial dance in Las Vegas, New Mexico.[2] What's so odd to me, is that the color palette is not only reminiscent of the peyote-inspired colors used in Huichol art, but if one takes a step back, the painting itself looks like an abstract representation of a peyote cactus flower and button. The colors of the alleged "flower" are inverted (a photography trick learned from Stieglitz?). The painting shows 9 ribs of the plant; the average peyote contains 5-14 ribs, but archetypal peyote images often contain 8 for some reason. Looking more closely at Huichol art, some contain 6 ribs, while others contain 8. Looking back at At the Rodeo again, one could argue that it does contain 8 ribs, but the southernmost facing rib is split into two to create an illusion of depth. Viriditas (talk) 23:18, 20 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmm, At the Rodeo does remind me of the spiral motifs, sometimes representing snakes with heads and tails, seen in Huichol yarn art. It certainly suggests an eye with its iris, as well as a peyote head with a tuft of hairs in the center (although in the plant the hairs are white). I like what Sascha T. Scott says about it:
"The whirling colors suggest a dizzying euphoric feeling, perhaps heightened by the whiskey that O'Keeffe told Luhan she had indulged in during the trip... the painting is better understood as being about more than just one entity or experience." Carlstak (talk) 17:54, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Another odd thing is that art critics previously said O'Keeffe didn't use the spiral or circular motif until 1939 (starting with Fishhook from Hawaii, which then became more prevalent in her work in the 1940s), and yet here it is as early as 1929. Viriditas (talk) 21:27, 21 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is only one mention of the possibility that O’Keefe had sexual attractions/relationships with women and it is based on a reference arguing that she did not. There is also evidence that she did and this should be included. Tmlben (talk) 09:27, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can you share it? I’ve been voraciously reading about her for the last six months, and the only thing I found is that she used to engage in nudist walks with a female friend in a forest. On the other hand, there’s a lot of sources about the suggestion she had an extramarital affair after her husband cheated on her, but the consensus is that it was platonic, although who knows. Viriditas (talk) 09:31, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I forgot to also mention, there are sources that discuss her time in Texas as an young adult teaching art. Because the writing is somewhat old and out of date, the style of this kind of narrative was never to say what the author really meant, but to say just enough to let the reader figure it out. Thankfully, that isn't true anymore in modern literature, but because of the constraints of many writers from the 20th century, it is difficult to truly know what was going on. My reading of the Texas era material is that O'Keeffe was very early on, even from childhood, considered odd, different, a freethinker, untamed, and by all accounts, a libertine of the intellectual kind. The Texas era biographical material alludes to all kinds of hijinks but doesn't really go into details. I think she was actively dating men and this was upsetting the married folk and potential suitresses, I don't know, it's hard to say, but what stands out the most is how O'Keeffe absolutely refused to fit in and wore unusual clothing that made people whisper and gossip about her, and also refused to style her hair like all the other women. She was a truly independent woman, and in Texas back then in the early 20th century, that could be very dangerous. Another data point, much later, is the intimate photograph of her and another man that Ansel Adams took, fully clothed of course, but she had that look of interest on her face that others have talked about in a somewhat backhanded way. Apparently there was some gossip about her and that man as well. My overarching point, is that aside from the nudist walks with her friend, I haven't run into anything matching your description, but I'm willing to find out more. I should also mention that she got into quite the disagreement with feminists of the 1960s and 1970s, who began interpreting and re-interpreting her work in ways that she disagreed with, particularly because she wanted to be seen as an artist not as a woman who makes art. I have to say, the most confusing thing of all, and the one topic that is bothering me the most, is the omnipresent debate about "flowers or vaginas". I've really tried to understand the truth of the matter, and the more you look into this, the more elusive the answer becomes. Did Stieglitz invent, market, and capitalize upon this idea, and encourage it? Perhaps. Did O'Keeffe really intend for these images and symbols to emerge in her work or was this something the critics promoted? Nobody knows. It's bugging me, and I wish I knew the answer. This reminds me of an early Monty Python sketch, where a television announcer tries to interest a couple in watching a documentary about molluscs. The couple finds it too boring to watch until the announcer begins to inject sex into every aspect of the documentary (The sketch also ends on a very disturbing note reflecting the homophobia of society in the 1970s, so please be warned before watching). My point is, one wonders if Stieglitz (and even O'Keeffe) allowed the gossip of sexual symbolism to flourish to sell more of her work and imbue it with sexual suggestion after the fact. Viriditas (talk) 21:33, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I see now that you are implying that Maria Chabot was O'Keeffe's lover. I think that's on the verge of a fringe theory. You say there's evidence, so can you share? I'm assuming you are going to point me to one of her letters? If not, the only other thing that exists is a work of dramatic fiction published last year that implies they were a couple. I don't think we can use that. Viriditas (talk) 21:55, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I found what you were talking about. It's in Restoring Women's History Through Historic Preservation (2003), which presents an alternative biography of O'Keeffe that isn't widely known or accepted. I will summarize the main points that I read here:
O'Keeffe was not a heterosexual as depicted by mainstream sources, but rather a bisexual who had many relationships with women. This is according to fiction writer Paula Martinac, whose claims are supported by writer Jefrrey Hografe in his book O'Keeffe: The Life of an American Legend, a biography I have never seen cited anywhere.
Her marriage with Stieglitz was a marriage of convenience
According to Hografe, Sante Fe locals knew O'Keeffe was bisexual
This alternative story maintains that O'Keeffe remained in the closet by choice
In this version, Maria Chabot is her live-in girlfriend
I believe that is the narrative you wish to add to the article. Given that I've never seen Martinac nor Hografe cited anywhere in the O'Keeffe literature, I have no idea how accurate or reliable this version of alternate history could possibly be, but I will admit it would make for an interesting addition. Viriditas (talk) 22:55, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I should also note, this narrative appears to be challenged elsewhere. Daniel Bullen, in The Love Lives of the Artists, depicts Chabot as an overworked employee, not as her lover. Viriditas (talk) 23:00, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nevertheless, given the history of gay subculture in New Mexico, I think it's reasonable to briefly explore this idea in the article, provided we can show at least one art historian who argues along the same lines as Martinac and Hografe. This is because on Wikipedia, we tend to favor experts who write and publish on the relevant topic under discussion. Hografe may describe himself as a biographer, but I've never seen his name before, so I'm skeptical. If we can find one reliable art historian who mentions the connection between O'Keeffe and this alternate perspective, then I think we should include it. Viriditas (talk) 23:10, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at my sources, art critic Hunter Drohojowska-Philp explores the topic in Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O'Keeffe. She dismisses it as baseless, and notes the rumors had been circulating since the 1930s. She also cites Chabot herself who emphatically denies that O'Keeffe was a lesbian. However, Drohojowska-Philp does admit that Chabot was "infatuated" with O'Keeffe. Viriditas (talk) 23:17, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If Chabot herself was consistently denying that O'Keeffe was a lesbian (or a bisexual), why are these rumors persisting? I'm assuming Chabot was out when she spoke about this? Viriditas (talk) 23:21, 2 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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