Episode Details

Georgia O'Keeffe spent her entire career fighting to control how the world saw her work. Alfred Stieglitz exhibited her paintings alongside nude photographs he had taken of her without her consent, critics insisted her flowers were sexual metaphors she never intended, and the art establishment tried to define her through her relationships with men. She responded by moving to the New Mexico desert and painting on her own terms for the next four decades.

This episode traces O'Keeffe from her early training through her complicated relationship with Stieglitz, her escape to New Mexico, and the fierce independence that made her the most famous American woman artist of the twentieth century.

• O'Keeffe's early artistic education and Stieglitz's unauthorized exhibition of her work
• The nude photographs, the marriage, and the power struggle that defined their relationship
• The move to New Mexico and the desert landscapes that became her signature
• O'Keeffe's lifelong battle against sexualized interpretations of her flower paintings