"Nature, Myth, and Sacrifice in the Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe" -- Ann W. Astell

The flower paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe are generally recognized to be symbolic self-portraits. They are often interpreted in mythic (and Freudian) terms that first translate the lines of O'Keeffe's body into floral shapes via metamorphosis and then proceed to discuss their meaning in terms of the meaning of flowers and their individual varieties in classical mythology. Can O'Keeffe's paintings also be interpreted in an anti-mythic, anti-sacrificial way, in keeping with Rene Girard's mimetic theory? I argue that the gigantic size of the flowers is in itself anti-mimetic and suggests an anti-sacrificial interpretation, whereby they figure as a symbolic protest against the abuse of nature's beauty by an expanding urban industrialism and also against the abuse of women's souls and bodies by a capitalist patriarchy that reduces them to objects to be posed, manipulated, and sold. This anti-sacrificial interpretation gains support from O'Keeffe's biography, her statements in interviews, and from her New Mexican landscape paintings.