The Beyond: Georgia O'Keeffe and Contemporary Art

Georgia O’Keeffe pioneered revolutionary ways of visually interpreting the world, leaving a lasting legacy for artists working today. This innovative exhibition brings together a significant group of O’Keeffe’s works as the centerpiece of an exploration of her continued force as a touchstone for contemporary art. Alongside paintings and sculpture by this founder of American modernism, viewers encounter works by emerging artists that evoke and expand upon O’Keeffe’s enchanting artistic language.

Enormous flowers, luscious color, airy compositions full of light, and clean forms that verge on abstraction: these hallmarks of Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings are seen anew through their influence on artists working today. The Beyond presents a conversation between some of O’Keeffe’s most important works and the work of twenty emerging artists, selected for their individual approaches to some of O’Keeffe’s powerful themes, including flowers, bodies, still lifes, skyscrapers, desert landscapes, and the delicate interplay between realism and abstraction. The Beyond introduces audiences to a new generation of American artists, providing a fresh look at O’Keeffe through the lens of contemporary art.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

Georgia O’Keeffe, Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, 1932, Oil on canvas, 48 x 40 in., Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2014.35, © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Photo: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art/Edward C. Robison III