Georgia O'Keeffe dramatically enlarged flowers as subjects in paintings such as Black Iris III.
O'Keeffe made many flower paintings during the 1920s and 1930s, often presenting a single blossom so close to the picture plane that its petals become abstract shapes. Black Iris III, painted in 1926, is one of the works associated with this approach. The enlarged scale encouraged viewers to notice line, color, folds, and tonal transitions.
O'Keeffe rejected the idea that her flower paintings had one fixed symbolic meaning. She explained that people often overlooked flowers because they were small, so she made them large enough to command attention. Critics and viewers have frequently interpreted the works as sexual imagery, but that interpretation does not replace the paintings' direct visual subject: flowers.