One Hundred Flowers [Paperback]

Georgia O'Keeffe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 24, 1990

Miniature Edition

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Flower paintings comprise more than one-fourth of O'Keeffe's total output. Callaway spent years tracking down these huge, colorful pictures, many of them in private collections; over half of the 100 oils, watercolors, pastel and charcoal sketches reproduced here have never before been published. O'Keeffe's best flower pictures are masterpieces of organic form, metaphors of the unfolding of the inner self. Some of the paintings are brash in their erotic associations, outrageous color contrasts and overblown size; a few even suggest Pop Art. Other pictures employ garish color combinations, still others look clumsy, or static and unrealized. But on the whole, this volume is a glorious discovery. Its publication marks the centennial of O'Keeffe's birth and ties in with a retrospective exhibition that tours nationally.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Inside Flap

Miniature Edition

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Knopf; Gift edition (October 24, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067973323X
• ISBN-13: 978-0679733232
• Product Dimensions: 4.7 x 3.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #461,984 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Just too small, December 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: One Hundred Flowers (Paperback)

While the pictures are wonderful, for an aging dinosaur like myself they are just too small. It is very hard to see the pictures!

Would have given it 10 stars if it was just a larger book. Some of the flowers are only one inch high, much too small for me to appreciate the detail.

Where can we find this in an 8.5 x 11 version?

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thorough and consice overview of O'Keeffe's flowers., July 31, 1999

By 

Jennifer ([e-mail]) (Seattle,Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Hundred Flowers (Paperback)

A picture is worth a thousand words; and one hundred pictures that happen to be O'Keeffe's are priceless. The works accurately portray the artist's keen eye for the beauty found in the smallest of mother earth's gifts: the flower. The book is an overall thorough and concise summary of the artist's most prized achievements.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "It's your world, for a moment", August 21, 2005

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Georgia O'Keeffe: One Hundred Flowers (Hardcover)

So said O'Keefe in describing what it's like to hold a flower and really to look at it.

O'Keefe managed to convey some of that wonder in paint. She grew them to huge size, setting them at or above human scale. She drew them in scorching colors, like "Poppy" or "Oriental poppy," or in stark lights and darks ("Jimson weed" and "Black hollyhock"). She displayed them with human passion, possibly drawing parallels between a plant's organs of regeneration and a human's ("Red canna" and "Yellow sweet peas"). Whatever you see in these - and different people will see differently - they are monumental presentations of something we think of as small and delicate. By itself, that's a message: the big and the small are equals in the world, when considered at their proper scale.

Maybe it's not fair to O'Keefe's ouvre to isolate one part of it like this - she preferred to show her work with a better balance of subjects and styles. These wonderful paintings deserve attention of their own, though. Some of the paintings are up to six feet tall and seven wide - even at 12"x10", book can't capture the full drama of the work. Still, it's an amazing collection.

//wiredweird