Historically, O’Keeffe’s conviction echoes prehistoric and modern lineages. The Lascaux paintings (c. 17,000 BP) transmit awe, danger, and ritual without a single caption. Centuries later, Kandinsky’s *Concerning the Spiritual in Art* (1911) argued that abstract color-form arrangements could articulate inner states as directly as music. Likewise, Rothko’s color fields—and the Rothko Chapel (1971)—stage quiet, word-resistant encounters.
Seen in this continuum, O’Keeffe occupies a middle space: not fully abstract, yet insistently beyond literal description. Her flowers and mesas are recognitions, not reports, and their meaning depends on how they feel before they are named. [...]
