The flower in Georgia O'Keeffe's 1927 painting Black Iris is an iris. The painting magnifies the dark, ruffled center of the bloom so that its folds and tonal changes fill most of the composition.
O'Keeffe painted numerous flowers in close-up, including irises, poppies, cannas, and jimson weeds. Her enlarged flowers were not botanical illustrations; they were carefully composed paintings that transformed familiar natural forms through scale, cropping, and color. Black Iris is especially associated with her interest in making viewers look closely.
The painting has sometimes been interpreted symbolically or sexually, but O'Keeffe objected to critics who reduced her flower paintings to such readings. She said she painted flowers large because people did not usually take time to observe them. Black Iris therefore illustrates both her visual method and the recurring debate over how her work should be interpreted.