Focus on Black Iris (painting) and explore the abstract.
Black Iris, formerly called Black Iris III, is a 1926 oil painting by Georgia O'Keeffe. Art historian Linda Nochlin interpreted Black Iris as a morphological metaphor for female genitalia. O'Keeffe rejected such interpretations in a 1939 text accompanying an exhibition of her work, in which she wrote: "Well—I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower you hung all your own associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower—and I don't." She attempted to do away with sexualized readings of her work by adding a lot of detail.It was first exhibited at the Intimate Gallery, New York from January 11 to February 27, 1927, where it was catalogued as DARK IRIS NO. 3. Unlike her previous shows, this show was largely devoid of the colourful paintings for which she had received critical acclaim. Lewis Mumford commented: "Yesterday O'Keeffe's exhibition opened … the show is strong: one long, loud blast of sex, sex in youth, sex in adolescence, sex in maturity, sex as gaudy as "Ten Nights in a Whorehouse," and sex as pure as the vigils of the vestal virgins, sex bulging, sex tumescent, sex deflated. After this description you'd better not visit the show: inevitably you'll be a little disappointed. For perhaps only half the sex is on the walls; the rest is probably in me."  The painting remained in the collection of the artist from 1926 to 1969. It was on extended loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1949 to 1969, when it was donated as part of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting's title changed in 1991 from Black Iris III to Black Iris when the list of her works was revised.The picture was in use on several episodes of The Handmaid's Tale in season 3. (Source: End credits of the show)
Linda Nochlin Alfred Stieglitz Georgia O'Keeffe Lewis Mumford Metropolitan Museum of Art New York