Matisse and O'Keeffe: Modern Artists with Talent and Connections

What Paul Johnson calls fashion art in the 20th century grew out of the experimental and impressionistic work of the late 19th century. It may be said to have originated with Picasso and Braque and Cubism, which helped launch a number of techniques and movements, such as Abstractionism and Surrealism. Like Picasso and Braque, Henri Matisse had connections with the rich American art patron in Paris, Gertrude Stein. (She purchased Matisse's La Femme au chapeau (Woman with a Hat) and sat for Picasso) (Johnson 657). The American painter Georgia O'Keeffe was not connected to Stein, but she did study fashion art and transpose it (after a series of skyscraper works) onto the natural world. Matisse and O'Keeffe, though disconnected by the Atlantic, both found support from the art establishment (Matisse through Stein, O'Keeffe through her husband Alfred Stieglitz, "the owner of...
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