Leaves of a Plant, 1942
Georgia O’Keeffe had now evolved into an established and celebrated modern artist in the US national consciousness and also in art circles around the world. Her paintings were bought by prominent museums, and she was officially honoured in many different ways.
In May 1946 she was given a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it ‘was a high-water mark for her’ and it was ‘the first major exhibition the museum had ever given to a woman artist’.1Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life, 1990, by Roxana Robinson. Kindle Edition p.453
O’Keeffe objected to being categorised ‘a woman artist’. She regarded herself an artist, and although she agreed to the idea of women’s liberation and was a life-long member of the National Woman’s Party, she would refuse to take part in exhibitions where only women’s art was shown. Despite this attitude — or perhaps exactly because of it — she became an icon for the women’s liberation movement in the US.
1946 was also the year her husband died. Georgia was by his side when he passed over, mid-July in a hospital bed after a serious stroke. She took turns with Dorothy Normann at his deathbed through the last days.
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Georgia was now into her second Saturn return. Her long life with Alfred Stieglitz had thus coincided with a full Saturn cycle in her chart. By the end of World War Two, Saturn and Pluto were conjunct in the sky, and this conjunction was close to Georgia’s natal Saturn and North Node. Transit Pluto was most closely conjunct her Saturn from 1942-1944 and would be exact on her North Node from late 1946 to mid-1947, indicating transformation with regard to her Soul’s direction and purpose. Transit Saturn came full circle in September 1946.
Immediately after her husband’s funeral, Georgia let Dorothy Norman know that she wanted full control over the gallery, ‘An American Place’, admitting Norman a time frame to leave the place. Georgia also vented years of dammed up feelings of rage on Norman during that same conversation.2Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life, 1990, by Roxana Robinson. Kindle Edition p.465
Saturn-Pluto has been called the aspect of trauma, and the archetype is about deep contraction and control of emotions needing compassion and radical (self)love in order to transform. Georgia had kept her vulnerable feelings of betrayal and jealousy to herself for many years, and she had also felt guilty about leaving her husband every summer as he grew older, more fragile, and needy.
After Alfred’s death she spent about three years in the city taking care of his estate, after which she moved to New Mexico permanently.
Black Bird with Snow Covered Hills, 1946
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In 1953 Georgia became a target for the FBI, because she had endorsed a presidential candidate representing a progressive party in 1948. Her home in New Mexico was not far from the Los Alamos community where the atom bomb had been developed, and because she corresponded with many different people all over the world, and since she often ‘entertained guests of foreign extraction’ she became a suspect, and her mail as well as her house were being watched. In less than a year, however, the file was closed again.3From the video: Hiding in Plain Sight: The O’Keeffe We Never Knew, a conversation between Katrina Latka from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and journalist Tim Gihring Transit Pluto was squaring her Sun, Moon and Mercury in 1953 — and Pluto is associated with all kinds of secrecy.
After Alfred Stieglitz no longer arranged annual exhibitions of her works, her public appearance was less frequent. In 1968 around the culmination of the great collective Uranus-Pluto conjunction, her painting Cow’s Skull with Red, White, and Blue appeared on the cover of Life Magazine featuring Georgia O’Keeffe under the headline: Stark Visions of a Pioneer Painter.
The article described her life in the New Mexican dessert where she lived close to nature with her self-sufficiency and her art. The Uranus-Pluto conjunction was transiting Mars in her birth chart in the mid-1960s, transit Neptune crossed her Jupiter-Ascendant in 1964-65, and for the rest of the decade Neptune would transit her full stellium in Scorpio.
When the article was published in Life Magazine, transit Neptune — who can highlight archetypal trends in the collective imagination — was conjunct her natal Sun and Moon, and now she became an icon for the counter cultural movement of the 1960s too. People would travel to New Mexico to ‘see’ her – often uninvited – and she would at times have to ask visitors to leave her property.
In the 1950s and throughout the 60s Georgia had begun travelling with friends to other parts of the world. She e.g. visited Frieda Kahlo and Diego Rivera in Mexico, she went to Europe, South America, the Far and Middle East, and her experiences with flying inspired her to a number of cloud paintings, the largest being painted in 1965, when transit Neptune was crossing her Jupiter-Ascendant conjunction.
‘While en route to the Far East, she became intrigued by the view of the clouds below the airplane and sought to render this aerial view in paint as if to symbolize her own expanded view of the world.’4Quote from TheArtStory.org
Beautiful symbolism of Neptune transiting Jupiter and Ascendent. She was now into her 80s.
Her New Mexican Life
She immersed herself in the nature and culture of New Mexico as she had done to the best of her ability all the other places she had lived. At the Ghost Ranch she would socialise with the many guests and also with the staff as she pleased. She also had frequent visits from family, friends, acquaintances, and professional associates.
She grew flowers and vegetables in her adobe house garden, and she was very conscious about her diet as well as her outer appearance. From her education as an artist she had been encouraged to develop style in all areas of life — not only in her art works.
Her homes were sparsely furnished with large windows, almost empty walls, and a few beautiful plants, and other things often from nature. She would be dressed in black and white, and her clothes would either be made by herself or tailor-made. Her appearance was more androgynous than feminine in the classical sense.
She was a friend of Ida Rolf, whom she met in New York in the 1940s. Georgia did Rolfing exercises, and she also received Rolfing massages regularly.
She was a prolific writer of letters to many different people, and her correspondences are a treasure for art historians, scholars, biographers, artists, and anyone to this day — as for generations to come, I believe.
From the local community in New Mexico she would hire people to help with gardening, cooking etc. She also took part in local festivals. She supported young people financially in getting educated — members of her family as well as young people from the village.
She even assisted one of her employees to acknowledge that she was actually pregnant — despite the young woman’s denial. Georgia drove her several miles to the hospital when it was time to give birth. The mother had wanted to leave the baby for adoption, but Georgia made sure the baby stayed with the mother and was brought back home. Then Georgia insisted that the father be found, she arranged a marriage, and the little family was eventually united. They kept revisiting Georgia for years.
In 1971 when transit Uranus had come full circle on its 84-years journey around the chart, Georgia began loosing her central vision. She was developing a disease that her maternal grandfather had also suffered from, and this was long before anyone had heard of epigenetics. From then on she would increasingly need assistance with her paintings and drawings until she could not paint anymore.
The following year she hired a young man, named Juan Hamilton, who was working in the kitchen at the Ghost Ranch. Transit Pluto was approaching a conjunction with her natal Venus. At first he assisted her with smaller tasks. These would grow in number as well as importance. They developed a close friendship, and Georgia fell in love with him. His outer appearance had certain similarities with Stieglitz. Juan became her travelling companion, and he assisted her in completing several valuable projects.5Including Viking Press publication Georgia O’Keeffe, 1976 and Perry Miller Adato video Georgia O’Keeffe, 1977′. – O’Keeffe Museum.org/timeline
As Georgias eyesight was fading little by little, Hamilton gained increasing control of her housekeeping, including her finances. He married a young woman and enriched himself with expansive houses and cars on Georgia’s expense. Georgia lost a number of long-term friends and associates because Hamilton failed to get along with them.
During her last years, they moved to a large house in Santa Fe, where Georgia had her own department, and she was tended to by hired nurses. Her household began to close in on itself. People who were hired were obliged to sign a paper of confidentiality regarding what they were witnessing in the home.
After Georgia’s death it was revealed that Juan Hamilton, with legal assistance, had changed her will so that he alone was to inherit all of her property including her paintings. Her family objected to this and initiated a lawsuit against Hamilton. During the preparations for the trial, it was disclosed that Georgia had signed a document believing she was getting married to a divorced Hamilton. The house had been adorned with beautiful flowers and Georgia all dressed in white. Whether this was true or not was never publicly verified.
The lawsuit did not manifest. An agreement was made such that the family received their share of the inheritance and — for the benefit of us all — Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings became available to the public.
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The myth of Core/Persephone comes to mind again. O’Keeffe and Hamilton had developed a mixture of love, friendship, and co-dependence. She would call for, and expect him to show up, whenever she wanted his assistance. He was not her equal in any way. He, on the other hand, would use his association with her to promote and sell his own ceramic works as art, and to cultural institutions where they perhaps did not really belong.
Core’s abduction to the underworld happened while she had drifted away from her playmates and peers, irresistibly attracted by the beautiful narcissus flower.
The author, Julien DuBrow, calls the myth of Demeter and Persephone one of Western culture’s greatest healing myths. DuBrow emphasises that Persefone, being the daughter of the Earth goddess, has learned to tend to things that have died and bring them back to life. An ability that is crucial for any one of us who needs to heal from trauma.
In the myth, Core cries for help when the Earth opens up and she is abducted to the underworld against her will. Her mother hears her cries and runs to help — however, she arrives too late. Demeter is then assisted by Hecate, the light bearer, in finding out what has happened to her daughter. Hecate also midwives Demeter through feelings of sadness, grief and rage.
While Demeter is going through this, the Earth lays barren. DuBrow reminds us that the love between Demeter and Core, mother and daughter, is a sacred bond.
Core, while in the underworld, learns to heal herself by facing her dark night of the soul. Eventually she and Hades/Pluto are united in love and their union gives birth to Dionysus, the god of celebration and ecstasy.6Julien DuBrow’s version of the Core/Persephone myth is from The Summit: The Heroine’s Journey, 2022 – DuBrow in a conversation with Flora Ware.
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Georgia O’Keeffe could not let herself cry for help. The shadow side of the Neptune-Pluto conjunction opposite her first house stellium in Scorpio thus manifested as betrayal and abduction in her personal life when she was old, fragile, and dependent on other people’s assistance.
Cliffs Beyond Abiquiu, Dry Waterfall 1943
As an artist Georgia O’Keeffe continually ‘brought dead things to life’ through her beautiful paintings. In her imagination and experience, the bones and skulls of the dessert were ‘very lively’, as she said.
Her sky scrapers emanated city life of light although the streets were devoid of people. In the city, she was also conscious of the light coming from the Sun, Moon, and the Stars.
She made the mountains breathe — as someone wrote — and her trees and flowers vibrated with passionate life under her tender brushes.
Through her skilful hands she channelled the spirit of Mother Earth in a way never seen before. Even her abstractions were organic, embodied, and gave birth to deep feelings in the viewer.
… she does abstractions that draw on her own emotional life, they draw on the natural world … She is saying:
‘This is not the world you know, but this is the world you feel you know’
—Roxana Robinson7quote from the video: Georgia O’Keeffe By Myself Allen Charlton
Green, Yellow, and Orange, 1960
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