While still a school girl, Georgia O’Keeffe had an experience of being reprimanded by a teacher for drawing a flower too small.1The incident is described in the book A Woman on Paper (1988), written by her close friend, Anita Pollitzer. This incident may have created an emotional trigger that she eventually managed to turn into a great talent. Her reasons for painting flowers big, however, evolved into something much more comprehensive, and it became part of her mission as an artist. She wanted us — the audience — to take time and really look at flowers.
17 years old, she left home to study at the Art Institute of Chicago. The day she entered the distinguished institution, 2. October 1905 — determined to ‘give up everything’ for her art,2Georgia O’Keeffe, A life, by Roxana Robinson. Kinde edition p. 46transit Saturn was squaring her Moon and Mercury and also the Neptune-Pluto conjunction. She had finished graduate school and moved to live with her aunt and uncle in Chicago — two manifestations of the Saturn square.
Jupiter was in a retrograde phase transiting her Pluto-Neptune conjunction and opposing her Moon-Mercury twice, as it was moving direct again during the first 6 months of her stay at the institute. The Neptune-Pluto archetype was thus amplified by Jupiter, and at the same time the opposition between the great conjunction and her stellium in Scorpio was challenged by the square from Saturn. It was forceful transits acting on her self-image — and her feelings, symbolised by the Moon, were strongly affected.
Initially she had felt intimidated by the whole art school ambience, which was very proud and traditional, and she met fellow students who were older and more skilful than her. For the first time she had felt unsure of herself. Her first experience of being exposed to a virtually nude male model in a classroom had made her blush and feeling so embarrassed ‘that she considered abandoning art school altogether’.3Georgia O’Keeffe – A Life, by Roxana Robinson. Kindle edition p. 52.Eventually she overcame her fears and ended up highest-ranking in her class.
Coming home after the first year she became seriously ill, however, and was unable to return to the art institute. She stayed at her parents’ house for the next year after which she enrolled at the Art Students League of New York in September 1907. At the end of the term there, in 1908, she was awarded a prize for a traditional still-life work.
Transit Saturn was opposing her Venus-Uranus conjunction in 1908-1909, and challenging aspects from Saturn (like conjunctions, squares and oppositions) often coincide with endings.
Her family could no longer support further education for her financially, so she stopped painting for four years and worked as a commercial artist. In retrospect as an elder, she remembered seeing no point in trying to ‘paint like other people. (…) there was no reason that I should attempt to do it any better. I hadn’t been taught to do it any way of my own‘.4Quote from the documentary: ‘Georgia O’Keeffe’, 1977, written and directed by Perry Miller Adato. She had realised that until then, her paintings had mainly been created to please others, and that she had made no efforts to please herself.
In 1912-14 she attended summer schools where she became assistent teacher to professor Alon Bement who ‘suggested that she read Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art, published in 1914′5Georgia O’Keeffe, A Life, by Roxana Robinson – Kindle edition p. 106 ‘Kandinsky’s treatise is considered one of the most important texts on modern art. In it, Kandinsky argues that art should be expressive of the artist’s inner emotions and that the artist should strive to communicate these emotions to the viewer’.6David Fox -https://davidcharlesfox.com/concerning-spiritual-art-vassily-kandinsky/He was born with a Moon-Neptune conjunction — a potential for great emotional and spiritual sensibility in particular to colours, music and imagery. Georgia’s birth chart also had a Moon-Neptune contact (an opposition).
Kandinsky described abstraction as “the elimination of everything superfluous” and “the concentration on essentials’7Ibid. — which sounds like an expression of Pluto and Saturn, who were forming an opposition in his birth chart. Georgia O’Keeffe was receptive to these ideas, and she read his book more than once. Saturn in his chart was close to the Jupiter-Ascendant-Sun in her chart — indicating that his manifestations could inspire her to ground some of her own visions.
Alon Bement also, and not least, introduced Georgia to the ideas and work of Arthur Wesley Dow. Dow was an artist, who ‘was challenging the entire Western tradition of imitation’ …. and ‘saw himself as a revolutionary’.8Georgia O’Keeffe, A Life, by Roxana Robinson – Kindle edition p. 83 He was a teacher of teachers and had founded the Summer School of Art under the Neptune-Pluto conjunction in the year 1900, when Uranus, as already mentioned, was forming an opposition to Pluto and thus adding revolutionary, Promethean fire to the conjunction.
In the fall of 1914 Georgia O’Keeffe, with financial aid from her aunt, enrolled at Columbia University Teachers College in Manhattan, where Dow himself was teaching. It is commonly believed that Dow taught her to see with new eyes. He had a deep interest in Japanese art, introduced the idea of Zen in the creative process, and keynotes of his teaching principles were about beauty, personal experience, style, abstraction and composition. Georgia’s own words about his teachings were:
‘His idea was — to put it simply — to fill a space in a beautiful way, which was a new idea to me’.9See note 2.
A. W. Dow was also born with a stellium of planets: Sun-Mercury-Jupiter-Mars and Pluto10Archetypal astrology allows (based on research) for 15 degrees of orb for conjunctions (orb=the divergence from exactitude of an aspect).. And not only did his chart also contain a stellium, he was born under a Uranus-Venus conjunction like Georgia O’Keeffe herself. So it was likely that a resonance and mutual understanding would emerge between the two souls — although on a personal level she regarded him a ‘sweet old man … so nice that he puts my teeth on edge some times’.11qoute from a letter from GOK to Anita Pollitzer in Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life (1999), by Roxana Robinson.
During the two years 1912-14, transit Saturn was conjoining the Neptune-Pluto conjunction in her chart and — as it were, when-the-student-is-ready-the-teacher-appears — Dow’s teachings opened up a new way for her to articulate and give physical form (Saturn) to the archetypal promptings from the great conjunction.
In the autumn of 1914 and through the first six months of 1915 the progressed Moon moved through Georgia O’Keeffe’s stellium in Scorpio coming full circle in April-May. This was a crucial time with regard to her overall emotional experience. During the summer she fell seriously in love with a political science professor, named Arthur McMahon, who was ‘the first really important man in her life’.12Quote from Roxana Robinson, the author of the definitive biography Georgia O’Keeffe, a Life, 2020 – in discussion with Nancy Scott, O’Keeffe scholar and professor of fine arts at Brandeis University.
Arthur MacMahon was also born under a stellium — four planets in Gemini — which included the Neptune-Pluto conjunction plus the Sun and Mercury. And his Neptune was exactly conjunct Pluto in Georgia O’Keeffe’s chart. So the stellium in his chart would be like a flood of inspiration for her experience of the Neptune-Pluto archetypal combination. Neptune, the planet of imagination, dissolves boundaries and Pluto eliminates what no longer serves the soul.
Depending on his time of birth, which is unknown to the public, a conjunction between his Moon and her Venus would also be likely — and thus indicate a very close emotional love-bond.
Throughout 1915 Uranus was transiting Georgia’s nodal axis — conjunct the South and opposite the North Node. During the summer and autumn, transit Saturn was squaring her Venus and later Uranus, indicating a change of direction. It was the year where she ‘put it all away, and started all over again ‘.13From the film portrait ‘Georgia O’Keeffe’, 1977 – produced and directed by Perry Miller Adato.
The nodal axis indicates themes from past lives that we bring into the present incarnation and the direction in which our soul is guiding us in this lifetime. Her direction was from Aquarius (group-consciousness) towards Leo, personal mastery.
In May 1915 transits of Mars and Venus formed a conjunction in Aries in her 5th house opposite the Venus-Uranus conjunction and (probably — depending on his time of birth) Arthur MacMahon’s Moon in Libra. Transit Jupiter was trining her Sun, Ascendant, and natal Jupiter, as well as sextiling her Descendant (axis of partnership) — aspects that would enhance feelings of romantic love and expansion of Self.
Transit Jupiter was also opposite her Mars while forming respectively the trine and sextile to her Ascendant and Descendant — thus elevating and expanding her experience of self vs. other and a dimension of her Animus (Mars). She wrote to a friend: ‘I’m falling in love, like I never thought was possible’.14Ibid. See note 12.
It was at that time she began creating abstract works.
Special nr. 32 – Her first abstract work after a walk with Arthur MacMahon in the summer of 1915, where they had been talking about abstract art.
The two had an especially deep encounter in the autumn of 1915, when transit Uranus was exact on her South Node for the third time and conjoining his Jupiter within one degree of exactitude. Jupiter-Uranus contacts have the potential of expanding and lifting our spirits to great heights.
Transit Jupiter and Saturn were forming a grand trine with her natal Jupiter and Ascendant — thereby accentuating the water element in her chart with a free flow of joyful and uplifting as well as grounding qualities.
Transit Jupiter was opposite her natal Mars for the second time that year, and with sextiles from transit Saturn and her natal Jupiter to Mars, a kite formation was formed. And kites are meant to fly!
Transit Pluto was moving into a square with her natal Venus — an aspect that can provide deeply transforming love experiences:
‘If I told you that I’m so glad that I’m almost afraid I’m going to die — I wonder if you could imagine how glad I am. I just can’t imagine anyone being anymore pleased and still able to live. Arthur is coming down to spend Thanksgiving with me …’ 15Quote from letter to Anita Pollitzer in Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life, 1990, by Roxana Robinson – Kindle edition p. 124.
Arthur McMahon’s Jupiter conjunct her South Node also indicated a past life relationship where he may have been a kind of mentor or elder relative to her. In this lifetime he would always reassure her and inspire her with books to read, e.g. about women’s rights and about youth coming into prominence which he, as a political activist, was very concerned about. In letters to a friend, she would call him ‘Political Science’. Like Indigenous Americans she would name people according to their characteristics and inner qualities.16See note 12
The strong affections between her and Arthur MacMahon did not evolve into a regular love affair, however. She seemed reluctant or ambivalent about involving herself in love-relationships. She warned her friend: ‘don’t mention loving anyone to me — it is a curious thing — don’t let it get you Anita if you value your peace of mind — it will eat you up and swallow you whole’.17Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life, by Roxana Robinson – kindle edition p. 120.
Instead, her feelings were channelled into her work. At the end of November 1915, she began a series of charcoal drawings. Her progressed Moon was now opposite Pluto, and transit Saturn was squaring her Uranus. Aspects inviting her to let go of self-imposed limitations and give birth to new ideas that might have lay hidden until then.
‘I decided I was going to begin to make drawings. I had a few things that I’d never thought of putting down — that nobody else taught me, and I was going to begin with charcoal, and I wasn’t going to use any colour until I couldn’t do what I wanted to do with charcoal or black paint, and went on from there’. 18From the film portrait ‘Georgia O’Keeffe’, 1977 – produced and directed by Perry Miller Adato.
She sent a roll of her drawings to Anita Pollitzer, asking her friend to let her know if she was ‘completely mad ‘ and also ‘not to show the drawings to anybody ‘.19Ibid. see previous note.
Anita Pollitzer was also born under a stellium in Scorpio. The two had remained friends from the time they met in New York as art students in 1914. Anita’s stellium covered mainly the first half of Scorpio with Uranus at 15 degrees conjunct Georgia’s Jupiter — a synergy with the possibility of liberating elevation and expansion into the depths of feeling — and they had a Mercury-Mercury conjunction at 27-28 degrees of Scorpio, which — not least — manifested as an ongoing conversation through numerous letters.
Anita Pollitzer wrote a book about their friendship: A Woman on Paper, published in 1988, thirteen years after her death and two years after Georgia O’Keeffe’s death. Though O’Keeffe had encouraged her friend to write the book, she strongly opposed the final edition being published, finding her friend’s portrait a ‘dream picture’ of herself. The manuscript had been underway for about two decades when it was discarded beyond discussion by O’Keeffe, for whom it had not been easy at all to deliver the message to her friend.
‘The incident was a deeply painful one for all concerned … In the same year that Georgia refused her consent to the project, Pollitzer lapsed into an early senility; she died in 1975’. 20Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life, by Roxana Robinson – Kindle Edition p. 505.
Lynne Bundesen wrote in a review in Los Angeles Times, 1988 (and this was before the Internet): (…) ‘A Woman on Paper is a book that causes you to examine your own friendships, that makes you wish you would write letters to your friends instead of telephoning. It is a book that makes you long for a friend as loyal as Anita Pollitzer, a companion as headstrong, discerning and gifted as Georgia O’Keeffe. (…)’.21The Memoir of a Legendary Friendship Los Angeles Times, 1988.
To be continued…
Image at the top: Oriental Poppies, 1928, by Georgia O’Keeffe