ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation / Thesis: “LIVING ON PAPER ...

trace the cultural threads of drawing and watercolor in O’Keeffe’s career from the
beginning of her graphic experiences until the commencement of her commitment to oil
painting in 1918. I consider the beginnings of her understanding and mastery of graphic
media in my second chapter. Then in my third chapter I look at the motivations for her
utilization of charcoal in her first modern works in 1915. In my fourth chapter, I examine
the role of graphic media in Stieglitz’s exhibitions that presented O’Keeffe’s first modern
works to the public in 1916 and 1917; in this chapter I also discuss the artists’s
contemporaneous use of watercolor to create her first modern works in color. In my fifth
chapter I analyze Alfred Stieglitz’s modes of photographing and discuss O’Keeffe’s
drawings and watercolors during the same period when she was moving into painting in
oils. In this last chapter, I also address how O’Keeffe made her transition into using
graphic media less often and less importantly in finished works after 1918 than she had
during the previous four years. It was between 1915 and 1918, the years on which this
dissertation centers, that O’Keeffe used drawings and watercolors to form the modernist
mode that established her as a major modernist in the eyes of Stieglitz and his audience.
Thus, by studying the problem from the contrasting view points of creation and reception,
I aim for a rounded understanding of the cultural functioning of medium.
Drawing and Watercolor and the History of the Stieglitz Circle
I have chosen to study O’Keeffe’s early graphic modern works in the context of
Alfred Stieglitz and his circle for a number of reasons. First, I am captivated by the
freshness and beauty of the works themselves. Second, the importance of Stieglitz and
the artists around him in the formation of modern art in America gives the art in question
lasting cultural impact. In addition, I find that Stieglitz’s devotion to establishing the
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