The concept of sexuality in the eyes of Sigmund Freud transcends a physical form of intimacy, his understanding lies on a macro scale where it no longer represents the form of sex which most of us are familiar with – a pleasure driven genital sex or as a means of reproduction – but any field or practice that is imbued with libido or provides an erotic charge for both the user and end user. For New York artist Georgia O’Keeffe, her painting of the Radiator Building aimed to disassociate herself from the sexualized image that her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, portrayed. (Stieglitz was a critic and a gallery owner, he was trying to push the sales of her art) While her art was heavily misunderstood by her contemporaries to be erotic depictions through …show more content…
On the other hand, his parallel and prominent critique, Eileen Gray approaches her work with a sensitivity to sensuality. Domestic interiors that were private was given explicit attention in a bid to accentuate a heightened awareness of the senses through an adept selection of materiality. To Gray, the reduction of modern architecture to mere visual elements is regressive in nature. If the ostentatious and overtly lavish design of the bourgeoisie was an aspect that the modernist wanted to rid, wouldn’t the appropriation of aesthetic forms for their symbolic value be counterintuitive? The same could be said with the conflict between sexuality and sensuality. Both O’Keeffe and Gray were heavily invested in the latter as opposed to their male counterparts which could be a symptom of sexual repression as introduced by Wilhelm