There is a 1926 oil painting of a flower, done by Georgia O’Keeffe and entitled “Black Iris,” originally hung as part of a New York gallery opening the following year, which art historians deem the “morphological metaphor for female genitalia.” It was not the first, nor would be the last time, that an art critic or historian would characterize the artist’s work as baldly-euphemistic hyper-sexualization, even patently queered. Quite the contrary. One could argue the interpretation is now entirely ubiquitous: when you think of O’Keeffe’s flowers, you think sex, feminine sex.
Yet O’Keeffe rejected this interpretation of her work, saying in 1939 in the catalogue for An American place:
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.
Attendant in the 1927 gallery exhibition was one Lewis Mumford, himself a sociologist, historian, and critic, who admitted the disconnect between creative intent and artistic impact. Said he of O’Keeffe’s flowers, “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.” This is self-awareness, and oddly uncommon to critics—at least in full ‘critique mode’—for I think the urge to be definitive, the compulsion to declaim, is too strong.
I keep thinking about O’Keeffe’s own stated intent. The remainder of what she said in her catalogue opening for An American place:
A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower - the idea of flowers. You put out your hand to touch the flower — lean forward to smell it — maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking — or give it to someone to please them. Still — in a way — nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small — we haven't time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.. .So I said to myself — I'll paint what I see — what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it — I will make even busy New-Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers.
I’ll be honest. I’m not sure if my intentions matter or not. Yes, I’m alive to talk about them, which makes me much different from Georgia O’Keeffe at the moment. Nor do I think there’s ubiquity over what my work means or intends, certainly not any critical agreement.
Nor is Blake, who ironically hails from the State of Georgia, a morphological metaphor for anything. There’s no reducing a boy down to that, unless you repeat him as O’Keeffe did her flowers. Then the trees recede into a blanketed forest, as velvet fades to moonlight blue-black in our eye. Luckily, we’re not there. I’d even argue that photography resists—more than other art forms—the easy pitfall into Platonic form. Blake can be, in some way, still Blake even if (to paraphrase O’Keeffe) “nobody sees a [boy.]”
The questions will always be more interesting to me. Who is this boy? Will we take the time to see him?
This small series is entitled, “Boy Iris.” It features ArtKings model, Blake. The series was shot in Los Angeles, in July 2020. Much gratitude to mother agent, Lenny, for allowing me the opportunity to work with his boys.