Interpreting Georgia O’Keeffe’s Work Through the Lenses of Class and Race

Georgia O’Keeffe’s Late Work: A Profound Reassessment of the Artist’s Final Chapters

Georgia O’Keeffe is often venerated as an icon of American modernism, celebrated for her bold floral abstractions and evocative southwestern landscapes. Yet, her late career—spanning from the mid-1940s until her death in 1986—has traditionally received limited scholarly attention compared to her earlier, avant-garde peaks in the 1920s and ’30s. Randall C. Griffin’s new book, Georgia O’Keeffe: The Late Work, seeks to correct that imbalance, offering a rigorous and thought-provoking analysis of the artist’s post-war output. Published by Yale University Press, the monograph dives into an era of O’Keeffe’s life marked by solitude, spatial exploration, shifting identity, and increasing abstraction, urging us to reconsider her legacy.

Beyond the Flowers: Reframing O’Keeffe’s Narrative

Griffin, a professor of Art History at Southern Methodist University, joins the ranks of over 150 scholars who have chronicled O’Keeffe’s contributions to American art. However, his focus diverges sharply from the traditional lens. In Georgia O’Keeffe: The Late Work, he contextualizes her art through the prisms of gender, class, race, and modernity, particularly in relation to the New York School and Abstract Expressionism—a reminder that O’Keeffe’s work in the 1950s and beyond was far richer than the dominant narratives suggest.

For instance, O’Keeffe’s time in Abiquiú, New Mexico, a place steeped in Indigenous and colonial histories, becomes central to Griffin’s analysis. Griffin reads O’Keeffe’s geometric “patio door” paintings as more than just studies in form and light. He views them as negotiations of identity—assertions of self made against the backdrop of a community with which O’Keeffe’s relationship was both intimate and fraught. The walls she painted, particularly in “My Last Door” (1952–54), function as literal and metaphoric boundaries between worlds.

A Critical Reading of Class and Race

Perhaps the most groundbreaking aspect of Griffin’s work is his willingness to interrogate the role of race, class, and Whiteness in O’Keeffe’s rural retreat. He draws on primary sources, including testimonies from local residents and former employees like Napoleón Garcia of the Genízaro Abiquiú community. Garcia’s observation that O’Keeffe often seemed “indifferent to the plight of the poor” is compelling, even as Griffin notes her occasional efforts to support the community through charitable donations toward schools and infrastructure.

By placing O’Keeffe’s practice in dialogue with issues of land ownership, settler colonialism, and cultural appropriation, the book challenges us to reassess the very ground on which her legacy has been built—literally and figuratively.

The Road, the Sky, and the Studio

In later chapters, Griffin turns his attention to the thematic and stylistic evolution of O’Keeffe’s work. As she aged, so too did her sense of artistic inquiry, becoming increasingly influenced by her international travels and philosophical interests, particularly Zen Buddhism. Works like “Winter Road I” (1963) are not merely minimalist renderings of highways—they are existential landscapes, exploring the transience of life and the unending passage of time.

Even as macular degeneration began to erode her central vision in the 1970s, O’Keeffe continued to work with the help of studio assistants. She produced bronze sculptures, clay forms, and paintings that were increasingly abstracted and tactile. A series of works based on the Washington Monument, created with Juan Hamilton—her confidant and assistant—testified to her continued fascination with shape, repetition, and mortality, even if their significance remains enigmatic to some viewers.

The Void as Voice

One of the most powerful ideas Griffin proposes is that “the voids” in O’Keeffe’s late work “speak volumes.” Whether it’s the inaccessible doors, the stark walls, or the long, empty roads, these paintings become meditations on absence, alienation, and autonomy. They are not simply serene vistas of desert solitude; they are charged artistic spaces where personal, political, and cultural tensions converge.

Impact on Art Historical Discourse

Georgia O’Keeffe: The Late Work is an important intervention in O’Keeffe scholarship and in broader discussions about American art. By examining her position relative to Abstract Expressionism and mid-century minimalism, Griffin challenges the idea that O’Keeffe was an isolated figure working outside of major artistic movements. On the contrary, her engagement with geometry, light, and form places her in rich conversation with the likes of Agnes Martin, Ad Reinhardt, and Mark Rothko.

Moreover, the book contributes to ongoing efforts to decolonize art history by critically examining