Alon Bement introduced Georgia O'Keeffe to Arthur Wesley Dow's ideas.
O'Keeffe encountered the ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow through Alon Bement, who taught at the University of Virginia summer school. Dow argued that art could be organized through elements such as line, color, and tone rather than relying only on realistic representation. This approach gave O'Keeffe a way to think about composition as an expressive structure.
The connection was especially important because O'Keeffe had become dissatisfied with the conventions of academic art. After studying with Bement, she read Dow's writing and began making abstract exercises based on personal responses to line and form. These experiments helped lead to the charcoal drawings that Alfred Stieglitz exhibited in New York in 1916.
Bement is sometimes confused with Dow because Dow developed the theory while Bement transmitted it to O'Keeffe through teaching. William Merritt Chase was another important teacher in her earlier education, but he was associated with the Art Students League rather than this particular introduction.