Episode #76: Art Auction Audacity-- O'Keeffe's Jimson Weed/White Flower #1 (Season 8, Episode 8)

January 18, 2021 Jennifer Dasal

In our eighth season, we’re exploring examples of some of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction considering why they garnered so much money, and discovering their backstories. Today, our season finale: Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower #1 .

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Episode Credits:

Production and Editing by Kaboonki. Theme music by Alex Davis. Additional research and writing by Arina Novak.

ArtCurious is sponsored by Anchorlight, an interdisciplinary creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle.

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Links and further resources

Jstor: Georgia O’Keeffe and the $44 Million Jimson Weed

Sotheby’s: 2014 sale catalogue entry and auction page

Artnet: Alice Walton’s Crystal Bridges Museum Bought Georgia O’Keeffe Painting for Record $44 Million

NPR: Stieglitz And O'Keeffe: Their Love And Life In Letters

Episode Transcript

A couple of years ago, my museum--the North Carolina Museum of Art--had the opportunity to show a traveling exhibition that featured Georgia O’Keeffe’s works alongside pieces by contemporary artist who have followed in her footsteps in one way or another. It was such a fun and eclectic show, and though I personally adore many of the contemporary artists shown there, it was still not hard to see the O’Keeffe works as the true stars of the show. I mean, how could you not? But there was one painting that was the undoubted star of it all-- the O’Keeffe to beat all O’Keeffes in that exhibition. It was a bold and beautiful white flower, with lush green petals, pushed so closely to the surface of the picture plane that you couldn’t help but be drawn into its swirling center. And if you weren’t careful, minutes or maybe even hours could just pass you by, so immersed in the painting you could become. As I stared at this flower, I could hear some whispers around me. That’s the one, a lady whispered. Wow, look at that, a man proclaimed. How much?! a third voice said? And I knew exactly what they were talking about, because this painting of a white flower wasn’t just fantastic to look at, it was also a bona fide world record smasher.

Some people think that visual art is dry, boring, lifeless. But the stories behind those paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs are weirder, more outrageous, or more fun than you can imagine. This season, season eight, we’re exploring examples of some of the most expensive artworks ever sold at auction and considering why they garnered so much money, finishing up with Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1. This is the ArtCurious Podcast, exploring the unexpected, the slightly odd, and the strangely wonderful in Art History. I'm Jennifer Dasal.

When we think of the foremost female artists throughout history, chances are probably good that a modern artist-- i.e., someone from the 20th century, as opposed to earlier, or even later, unless you’re a contemporary art freak like me--a modern artist is likely the one that will spring to mind. And if it’s not Frida Kahlo who first enters your brain, it probably will be Georgia O'Keeffe. O’Keeffe was an extraordinary American painter whose highly individual style brings together two important preoccupations within art in the first half of the 20th century-- abstraction and pictorialism. Pictorialism, by the way, is a term that’s a bit hard to pin down and mostly applies to photography, but it generally means a focus on the tone and feel of a composition rather than showcasing reality. O’Keeffe did both, and did both splendidly--creating beautiful pictures that inched closer and closer to abstraction, all while formulating a trademark style that truly celebrated the flora, fauna, and landscapes of her home country.

And chances are that it’s that flora element--bright blooms, dramatically cropped-- that you really imagine when you picture a Georgia O’Keeffe painting in your head. Throughout her long career, she produced almost 2,000 works of art, with flowers making up a little more than 10% of her oeuvre. But she also painted indelible urban scenes, vast landscapes, and yes, lots of cow skulls. Her name has become synonymous with a certain westernized, sometimes feminized version of mid century modern American art--and as such, she’s always, always in vogue, especially among museums and collectors. So it’s not a surprise to know that her works sell well at auction and beyond. And in November 2014, one piece broke the world record amount for the price paid for any woman in the history of art. Her work, Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 sold for $44.4 million at a Sotheby's auction.

Before we get to addressing Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 and all its pertinent details, let’s get a quick look at the life of the great Georgia O’Keeffe. Georgia was born on November 15, 1887 near San Prairie, Wisconsin to Ida and Francis O’Keeffe, who recognized her artistic talent early on and provided her with private instruction in the finer points of artmaking. In 1905, when turned 18, she embarked to the Art Institute of Chicago and a year later studied at Arts Student League of New York, receiving formal training with a conventional European focus that emphasized drawing from life and casts. It’s possible, at the outset of her studies, that she felt a bit outside of the norm in a couple of ways-- first in that she was a woman, of course, and this point will naturally be something we’ll return to shortly in our discussion today-- but also because it was still super in vogue for serious art students to go abroad to Rome, or especially Paris, to complete their artistic training. O’Keeffe didn’t do that. She trained solely in U.S. institutions and grew up within this unique environment, where she was exposed to the alternative modes of learning while attending the earliest Modernist exhibitions in New York City, breathing in the newness of artists like Henri Matisse and Auguste Rodin.

After finishing school, she jumped around for a while as a teacher, moving to Virginia, Texas, and South Carolina, before returning to New York to study there once more, this time at Columbia University’s Teachers College. And it was in New York that one of the most influential moments of her life occurred when, in early 1916, she first met Alfred Stieglitz.

Alfred Stieglitz is considered to be the big daddy of modern photography in the United States, first and foremost, but he was also a huge patron and promoter of the artists in New York city at the beginning of the 20th century. He was the founder and director of a prominent gallery, known as 291, though its full, official time is the much more cumbersome “Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession.” Not only did Stieglitz use his gallery to promote photography as an artistic medium worthy of respect and admiration as painting and sculpture were--a pretty radical thought, still, at the early part of the century--but he also exhibited traveling shows by the leading figures in European avant-garde, including Matisse, Rodin, Pablo Picasso, and many others.

In early 2016, O’Keeffe visited 291 to see an exhibition of Marsden Hartley paintings. And their connection was a seemingly strange one at first glance. As Sarah Greenough, the head of photography at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., noted in an NPR interview in 2011, quote, “Stieglitz was the most important person in the New York art world. And O'Keeffe was a schoolteacher — teaching art in Texas.” In other words: a famous dude, beginning a friendship with a not-at-all-famous woman. Their mutual professional admiration grew into a personal acquaintance, which then evolved into a mentorship, and later progressed into a slow-burning romantic relationship, thus becoming one of the most fertile love affairs in the history of American art, one that is beautifully documented in thousands of letters and hundreds of Stieglitz’s own photographs.

But Stieglitz wasn’t just personally incredibly important to his future wife-- they would go on to marry in 1924--but he was also hugely influential in her career as well. In May 1916, only months after they first met, Stiglitz exhibited O'Keeffe's work at 291 for the first time and presented her first solo show a year later. In June 1918, at the age of 31, she decided to quit teaching and O’Keeffe moved to New York City and then to Lake George, New York, to live with the extended Stieglitz clan. And it was during this period that the works we think of as typically O’Keeffe began to develop. Inspired by the lush rural landscapes surrounding her at Lake George, she felt transformed, lost in the moment, and wanted to share her sensations with her viewers. She aspired to portray nature from this sensory perspective, one that would allow viewers to experience a unique encounter with something that usually goes unnoticeable. She especially felt this about something as small as a beautiful flower. Famously, she once declared, quote, “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. 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.” To fix this rush-rush-rush mindset, O’Keeffe scrutinized flowers and plants as if each was an individual, basically creating a portrait of a particular item. The result is a highly detailed, sometimes ethereal and breathtaking close-up images. Voila-- those O’Keeffe florals you are probably imagining right now, a big way to enjoy something small that usually passes us by.

Coming up next: O’Keeffe breaks the world record for women artists. Stay tuned.

Welcome back to ArtCurious.

In the final year of the 1920s, Georgia O’Keeffe needed a little change of pace, and when the opportunity arose to travel to Santa Fe and onwards to Taos, New Mexico with her friend and fellow artist Rebecca Strand (wife of photographer Paul Strand), she leapt at the chance. And this: this was another turning point in O’Keeffe’s career, as important as her fateful 1916 meeting with Stieglitz. From 1929 on, she spent a good part of every year ensconced in New Mexico, enthralled by the rustic beauty and energy of the American southwest. It was a land she called “The faraway,” and every year, its pull on her seemed stronger and stronger. She bought her first house there in 1940, in the tiny town of Abiquiú, about an hour’s drive north of Santa Fe, and she spent long periods there, splitting her time between New Mexico and New York. After Stieglitz’s death in 1946, she continued this cross-continental living arrangement, mainly so she could assist in settling Stieglitz’s estate and to donate many of his artworks across the country. But once that was over, O’Keeffe was free to return to the land she loved, and this time, to do it permanently. She moved in 1949, and it was apparent that it was something she had been considering doing for a long while. As she wrote to her friend and fellow artist Arthur Dove in 1942, quote, “My period of indecision is over… I am going West… the country seems to call one in a way one has to answer it. I wish you could see what I see out the window. The earth pink and yellow cliffs to the north—the full pale moon about to go down in an early morning lavender sky behind a very long beautiful tree covered mesa to the west—pink and purple hills in front and the scrubby fine dull green cedars—and a feeling of much space—It is a very beautiful world.” Unquote.

Over the many years she spent in New Mexico, O'Keeffe devoted herself to the daily ritual of painting, discovering new sources of inspiration at seemingly every turn. Many days, she’d rise with the sun and take an early walk through the desert. Breakfast would follow at 7 a.m., and usually consisted of eggs, bread, and hot chili with garlic oil, as Mason Currey pointed out in the book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. Sated by an early-morning dose of nature and grub, she’d head to her studio, breaking at noon for lunch-- and then back to work. In a letter to William M. Milliken, a director of Cleveland Art Museum, in 1930, she described how just a glance outside could bring an idea to mind, writing, quote, “Outside my door that opened on a wide stretch of desert, these flowers bloomed all summer in the daytime.” One wonders if the flowers she is describing here are the bright white blooms of the jimson weed, a flower so striking that it became the subject of numerous canvases. In her letters, she wrote of the weed lovingly, noting, quote, “It is a beautiful white trumpet flower with strong veins that hold the flower open and grow longer than the round part of the flower—twisting as they grow off beyond it…Some of them are a pale green in the center—some a pale Mars violet. The Jimson weed blooms in the cool of the evening—one moonlight night at the Ranch I counted one hundred and twenty five flowers. The flowers die in the heat of the day…Now when I think of the delicate fragrance of the flowers, I almost feel the coolness and sweetness of the evening.”

Jimson Weed/White Flower No.1 delivers this sensation in a rather stunning package. O’Keeffe’s canvas presents us with one of her signature enlarged blossoms levitating in a seemingly indefinite pictorial space. In its bold organic curves and with her sophisticated color palette, O'Keeffe attempts to convey the beauty and sweetness of what may be deemed by some as an insignificant flower. That’s the great trick of Georgia O’Keeffe, that she was was able to perform these elegant metamorphoses of normal, everyday items into the opulent protagonists of her large-scale works. We are sucked into her scene, engulfed by her flowers, as our eyes follow green curve to green curve, the permanently blue sky suffused with wispy clouds, and the pristine whiteness of the jimson weed’s soft petals. It’s a stunner. It’s a flower transformed into an object worthy of adoration-- an icon, a reverent image proclaiming the supremacy of even the tiniest elements of the natural world.

Not that everyone liked it, of course. O’Keeffe once noted, quote, “The men didn’t like my color. My color was hopeless. My color was too bright. But I liked colors.” Unquote. And color itself was important to O’Keeffe, even when the color was white, which many like to argue is the absence of color--but that’s a concept for another day. It was through color that O’Keeffe could explore and create her experiences of the world. As she wrote about this work and others of its ilk, quote, “The large White Flower ... is something I have to say about White - quite different from what White has been meaning to me. Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know that this flower is painted large to convey to you my experience of the flower and what is my experience of the flower if it is not color. I know I can not paint a flower. I can not paint the sun on the desert on a bright summer morning but maybe in terms of paint color I can convey to you my experience of the flower or the experience that makes the flower of significance to me at that particular time.” Unquote.

Some have noted that O’Keeffe’s long relationship with Alfred Stieglitz, and friendship with other photographers like Paul Strand, greatly influenced works like Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 in its style. And I totally see what they mean here: the bloom of the jimson weed is so close to the surface of the picture that you can almost pretend that the panel itself was cropped, just like a photo could be, or that O’Keeffe’s image could represent a close up, or an object photographed with a macro lens. It’s also that perfect O’Keeffian combo of the natural world and abstraction, where the picture feels incredibly flattened to us-- because even though she does modulate the colors and shadows to provide us with a sensation of depth, it isn’t a super deep-space painting. It feels like a photograph in that way. And that just makes it feel more immersive to us, so that we are drawn into that mesmerizing center of the bold white flower. A connection can be made, then, to another artist who was a subject of this season of the podcast-- Mark Rothko-- whose abstract canvases became meditative experiences for his viewers. O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed acts similarly here, as she uses pure color, shape, and that unbelievably large scale and close-up view to make us feel as if we’re in a deeper state, another plane, a dream landscape of natural beauty.

Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 belonged to the artist’s sister, Anita O’Keeffe Young, who took possession of it before 1966-- the exact date is a bit murky. But we do know that it was sold off as part of O’Keeffe Young’s estate in the mid-1980s, and it spent until December 1987 circulating between two private collectors before being sold, for the first time, at auction for the price of $990,000 and reappeared again at a price of $1,047,500 in 1994. So it was only in the ‘90s that Georgia O’Keeffe broke the $1 million barrier. Before it ended up back on the auction block in the new millennium, it got some serious cred in lots of exhibitions of O’Keeffe works, all over the world-- not just at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, but also San Francisco, New York, London, Mexico City, and Yokohama, Japan, among others. And then it ended up in another place of honor for a six-year loan: the White House, where it was requested for a long-term stay by Laura Bush during George W. Bush’s presidency. And then, in 2014, it returned to auction, with Sotheby’s hosting it at an auction estimate of between $10 and $15 million. Previous to this, O'Keeffe’s highest auction record was $6.2 million for a work sold in 2001, called Calla Lilies with Red Anemone. But the $15 million estimate was shattered, with the buyer eventually shelling out nearly three times the amount, at $44,405,000. As seems to be the grand tradition of many big auctions, the buyer was not revealed to the general public, but the truth came out a year later. The purchaser of Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1? Alice Walton, the Wal-Mart heiress, and her American art museum based in Bentonville, Arkansas, the inimitable Crystal Bridges Museum. So it’s not just the Qataris or Saudis or any other wheelers and dealers from the Middle East who are able to make a splash in the art world-- it’s sometimes nice when we Americans are able to do so, too. But what’s nicest of all is that the sale of Jimson Weed afforded O’Keeffe the ability to be noted as the female artist who has set the record for art sales at auction, a record that, as of the recording of this episode, still hasn’t been beaten. I love that. But I also love that such news might not have mattered so much to the esteemable artist, because though being sought after by collections is surely a good thing, it wasn’t that important to her, personally. She once said, quote, “[I want] to paint what I see, as I see it, in my own way, without regard for the desires or taste of the professional dealer or the professional collector. I attribute what little success I have to this fact.”

Thank you for listening to the ArtCurious Podcast. This episode was written, produced, and narrated by me, Jennifer Dasal, with additional writing and research help by Arina Novak. Our theme music is by Alex Davis at alexdavismusic.com, and our logo is by Dave Rainey at daveraineydesign.com. Our show production and editing services are by Kaboonki, the silliest name in superb podcasts and videos. Ask them to help your show too at kaboonki.com. The ArtCurious Podcast is sponsored primarily by Anchorlight. Anchorlight is a creative space, founded with the intent of fostering artists, designers, and craftspeople at varying stages of their development. Home to artist studios, residency opportunities, and exhibition space Anchorlight encourages mentorship and the cross-pollination of skills among creatives in the Triangle. Please visit anchorlightraleigh.com.

The ArtCurious Podcast is also fiscally sponsored by VAE Raleigh, a 501c3 nonprofit creativity incubator. We’re a fully independent podcast, and we rely on sponsors and donations to keep us going, so if you enjoy this show and have the means, please consider giving $10 to help this show, and thank you for your kindness. And if you don’t have money to give, that’s okay! You can help our show as well by leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen-- believe me, it makes a huge difference and helps new listeners tune in. For more details about our show, including the image mentioned in this episode today, please visit our website: artcuriouspodcast.com. We’re also on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at artcuriouspod.

Check back with us in a few months when we explore the unexpected, slightly odd, and strangely wonderful in art history.