Georgia O'Keeffe's 1926 painting Black Iris shows a large, dark iris flower.
The work enlarges the flower so dramatically that the viewer sees its central folds and velvety tonal transitions rather than a small botanical specimen. O'Keeffe's flower paintings are known for this close-up scale and for their careful treatment of organic curves.
Black Iris belongs to a period when O'Keeffe was developing some of her best-known floral images. The painting is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it forms part of the museum's modern American art collection.
Some viewers and critics interpreted O'Keeffe's flowers as sexual symbols, but she rejected the idea that her paintings should be reduced to Freudian readings. She emphasized that magnification let people see the flower's beauty, because many viewers passed over it without really looking.