Georgia O'Keeffe's 1926 painting with an enormous close-up iris is Black Iris.
Black Iris is an oil painting made in 1926. O'Keeffe enlarged a flower so dramatically that the viewer sees an intimate, almost abstract arrangement of dark petals and central forms rather than a conventional botanical illustration.
The work belongs to her celebrated series of flower paintings from the 1920s. O'Keeffe said that people often did not take time to look closely at flowers, so she painted them large enough that viewers could not ignore their details.
Some critics interpreted her flower paintings as symbols of female sexuality. O'Keeffe rejected that imposed reading and emphasized her interest in looking carefully at nature. Black Iris is also sometimes confused with her red, white, and yellow iris paintings.