Georgia O'Keeffe, an artist often called the mother of American modernism, worked independent of major art movements. Championed as a revolutionary feminist in part for the perceived sexual expression of her closeup depictions of flowers, O’Keefe did not view her work through that lens. She found both criticism and praise of her work to be mere projections of the viewer, commenting, “I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.”