Alon Bement taught Georgia O’Keeffe the influential ideas associated with Arthur Wesley Dow at Columbia University.
O’Keeffe studied with Bement at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York in 1914. Bement had been a colleague of Arthur Wesley Dow, whose approach emphasized composition, line, color, and the expressive organization of visual elements rather than simply copying nature. This encounter helped redirect O’Keeffe’s thinking about what an artwork could do.
Dow’s principles encouraged O’Keeffe to work from personal responses and formal relationships. She later produced abstract charcoal drawings that attracted the attention of photographer and gallery organizer Alfred Stieglitz. Those drawings helped launch her professional career and became important evidence of her early modernist development.
A common mix-up is to name Dow himself as O’Keeffe’s direct teacher in this episode. O’Keeffe learned Dow’s ideas through Bement, although Dow’s influence was decisive.