Ruth Leon recommends… Georgia O’Keeffe – Imagine BBC

Georgia O’Keeffe – Imagine BBC

I rarely watch broadcast television because my time is mostly occupied with screening video and online productions for  my Theatrewise so I miss a lot. It’s a question of choices and sometimes I choose wrong. Fortunately, many of the best programmes made for broadcast are now available online.

Here is a case in point. I heard about, but didn’t see, this great documentary about Georgia O’Keefe, originally broadcast as part of the imagine series on BBC2. I feel really lucky to have been able to catch up with it on YouTube – in my opinion the best invention since the wheel – as I had never previously ‘got’ O’Keefe’s puzzling and in-your-face paintings and now I do.

On the brink of the Depression in 1929, Georgia O’Keeffe – America’s first great modernist painter – headed west. In the bright light of the New Mexico desert, she forged an independent life and found the solitude she needed for her truly original art.

The photographs taken of her by her older lover (photographer Alfred Stieglitz)  scandalised the public. Her flower forms were seen as a shocking and vibrant display of femininity, her bones and skulls as surreal and disturbing. Now, 30 years after her death, to coincide with a major Tate Modern show in 2016, imagine… told the story of Georgia O’Keeffe, one of the most inspiring artists ever.

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