Why did critics interpret Georgia O’Keeffe’s flower paintings through Freudian ideas?

Critics interpreted Georgia O’Keeffe’s flower paintings through Freudian ideas primarily because her partner and promoter, Alfred Stieglitz, actively framed her work in those terms.1

Stieglitz equated the creative process with sexual energy and promoted O’Keeffe’s imagery as the visual manifestation of a "sexually liberated woman". To reinforce this narrative, he exhibited photographs of O’Keeffe—often in various stages of undress—alongside her abstract paintings. This association between her art and her body captured the imagination of critics, leading them to view her large-format flower paintings as proof of her "female nature" and as sexual symbolism.12

O’Keeffe strongly rejected these gendered, essentialist interpretations. She maintained that her focus was on the Modernist aesthetic of magnification, intended to force viewers to take time to see the beauty of natural forms. She clarified that her paintings were simply a reflection of her own experiences and observations, rather than the sexualized projections imposed upon them by others.312