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  3. To Paint Is to Live: Georgia O’Keeffe(乔治亚-欧姬芙)

To Paint Is to Live: Georgia O’Keeffe(乔治亚-欧姬芙)

游客2023-10-20  38
问题             To Paint Is to Live: Georgia O’Keeffe(乔治亚-欧姬芙)
                             (1887-1986)
    Georgia O’Keeffe was truly an American original. Tough, sparse and lean, she embodied the rugged individualistic nature of the American pioneer. But instead of tilling the soil, she made her strides in the field of contemporary American art.
    Born on a 600-acre farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, on November 15, 1887, O’Keeffe throughout her long life preferred vast plains and open spaces to city living. From the summer of 1929, when she made her first visit to New Mexico, the starkness of the desert fascinated her. After summering in New Mexico for many years, she finally moved permanently to New Mexico, in 1949, where she continued to paint until her eyesight faltered in the late 1970s. From this region the themes of some of her finest works evolved.

    O’Keeffe’s strictly American art education began with private lessons at the age of ten. Teachers recognized her talent but often criticized the larger-than-life proportions that she liked to paint. At an early age, she was already moving away from realistic copying of objects to things she perceived with her own eyes, mind, and soul.
    O’Keeffe’s formal high school education continued at a private school in Madison, Wisconsin, and after a family move, she graduated from a Williamsburg, Virginia, high school in 1903. From 1905 to 1906 she studied at the Art Institute in Chicago, and from 1907 to 1908, at the Art Students’ League in New York.
    In 1908 , perhaps disappointed with the rigidity of American art education at the time, she gave up painting and became a commercial artist, drawing advertising illustrations in Chicago. However, in the summer of 1912, she decided to take another art course in Virginia under Alon Bemont, and her interest in creative painting came alive again.
    After art courses from 1915 to 1916 in New York under the more liberal art teacher Arthur Dow, O’Keeffe accepted a position as an art teacher at a small college in South Carolina. It was at this point that the determined young woman isolated herself, took stock of her painting, and decided to reject the rigidity of the realism that she had been taught for a style all her own: " Nothing is less real than realism—(69)details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis , that we get the real meaning of things. " From this revival came black and white abstract nature forms in all shapes and sizes, the beginning of her highly individualistic style.
    O’Keeffe sent some of her prints to a friend in New York and told her not to show them to anyone. The friend was so impressed with them that she ignored the request and took them to a famous photographer and promoter of modern artists, Alfred Stieglitz. His reaction was immediate: "At last, a woman on paper!" Without O’Keeffe’s knowledge or consent, Stieglitz exhibited these prints in his gallery. Infuriated, she went to New York to insist that he take her drawings down. Stieglitz, however, convinced her of their quality, and she allowed them to remain on exhibit. Subsequently, Stieglitz became the champion of O’Keeffe’s works and helped her gain the prominence she deserved. As art critic Lloyd Goodrich said, "Her art presents a rare combination of austerity and deep seriousness ...(70)Even at her most realistic, she is concerned not with the mere visual appearance of things, but with their essential life, their being, their identity... The forms of nature are translated into forms of art. " [br] What did O’Keeffe prefer to city living all her life?
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答案 Vast plains and open spaces．
解析 (第二段第一句介绍乔治亚·欧姬芙的生平时提到，O’Keeffe throughout her long life preferred vast plains and open spaces to city living．可知答案为Vast plains and open spaces．)
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