{"title":"Georgia O’Keeffe’s Hawai‘i?","authors":"Sascha T. Scott","doi":"10.1086/710471","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"In 1939 Georgia O’Keeffe traveled to the Territory of Hawai‘i to fulfill a commission for the advertising agency N. W. Ayer & Son. Her expenses were covered in exchange for two paintings to be used in advertisements for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (now Dole Food Company), an enterprise entangled with the conquest of Hawai‘i. James Dole built his pineapple empire on the dispossession and oppression of Indigenous Hawaiians by U.S. missionaries, businessmen, and politicians. O’Keeffe’s experiences in and paintings of Hawai‘i were structured by colonialism, and Dole advertisements that feature her paintings served to justify and naturalize U.S. conquest. To understand O’Keeffe’s work as participating in the highly racialized project of colonialism is to disrupt dominant histories that, often unwittingly, contribute to the ongoing disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples. Doing so is an important step toward “decolonizing” the history of American modernism.","PeriodicalId":43434,"journal":{"name":"American Art","volume":"34 1","pages":"26 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2020-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/710471","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"American Art","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1086/710471","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"ART","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
In 1939 Georgia O’Keeffe traveled to the Territory of Hawai‘i to fulfill a commission for the advertising agency N. W. Ayer & Son. Her expenses were covered in exchange for two paintings to be used in advertisements for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (now Dole Food Company), an enterprise entangled with the conquest of Hawai‘i. James Dole built his pineapple empire on the dispossession and oppression of Indigenous Hawaiians by U.S. missionaries, businessmen, and politicians. O’Keeffe’s experiences in and paintings of Hawai‘i were structured by colonialism, and Dole advertisements that feature her paintings served to justify and naturalize U.S. conquest. To understand O’Keeffe’s work as participating in the highly racialized project of colonialism is to disrupt dominant histories that, often unwittingly, contribute to the ongoing disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples. Doing so is an important step toward “decolonizing” the history of American modernism.
期刊介绍:
American Art is a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to exploring all aspects of the nation"s visual heritage from colonial to contemporary times. Through a broad interdisciplinary approach, American Art provides an understanding not only of specific artists and art objects, but also of the cultural factors that have shaped American art over three centuries of national experience. The fine arts are the journal"s primary focus, but its scope encompasses all aspects of the nation"s visual culture, including popular culture, public art, film, electronic multimedia, and decorative arts and crafts. American Art embraces all methods of investigation to explore America·s rich and diverse artistic legacy, from traditional formalism to analyses of social context.